it took

it took the earth to

stop turning

to bring us all around

it took the wound to

stop burning

to remember what we'd found

in dark of night amid

such tired

times

these lives become as one

inspired

entwined

as witness to the folly

there

beyond the mortal gates

divining answers from the

air

whom to love or hate

ideas surge within the

soul

adversity's a mirror

and we've blindfolded eyes

again

image coming clearer

is it Hobbes or just some fatal 

flaw

compels this endless war

the paradox of needing 

less

impatient ones crave more

on and on across the

sky

as blurred dreams arise

it took however fleeting

peace

to garner my surprise 

horizon

the seekers took to sea again

if only in the mind

to see it on some other plane

to no longer be blind

the feelers took to field

and lay their heads to ground

that sowed seed might yield

abundance all around

and lovers come at last within 

for truth is rendered here

forget the dross and mute the din

horizon now is clear

the maelstrom.4

"Profanations," 

I thought to myself...

As I regarded the little bird...

Freezing on the bar beside me.

I took a swig of the Samohon... 

Ukrainian moonshine...

From a flask I'd had tucked in the pocket of my cloak.

Hours had gone by...

The winds swirled and there was a perilously ill mix of colours attempting to texture the near nocturnal sky.

The war was the suggestion on the air...

Not rain...

Not snow.

Nadja had long since gone to sleep...

I imagined...

And so there I was with nothing much to do but wait...

And think.

For some reason, the thoughts that came to me filled me with hope...

The little bird slanted its head with interest.

I felt my heart pounding with an excitement that only circles the truly living...

Not the soon to...

Die.

I felt the same way I had felt just two weeks earlier, when I'd departed Salzburg...

With Billings shouting and waiving at me from the exit door of the funicular at the base of the Hohensalzburg Fortress in the exquisite, old city...

Salzburg.

 The venue had been extraordinary.

We had gone there to attend a seminar that was focused on the ever and increasingly perilous plight of engaged and interested non-combatants in contemporary war zones.

This included journalists, human rights organisations, Doctors Without Borders...

And so on...

It was the first time that I had met with Billings since back then...

Since the Balkans...

25 years.

When we'd met at the funicular to go up, it was awkward.

He embraced me as he used to...

As a father, or mentor...

But with an almost palpable dread dripping from the fingers that had touched me.

Dread for the lost one he'd thought me to have become.

But...

The occasion...

The venue...

 

I had done some research prior to having arrived and had learned that the fortress had been built in 1077 by Archbishop Gebhard, and that it was the largest, fully preserved fortress in Central Europe.

 

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the devastation of the Hungarian/Peasant's war had forced much of the clergy to seek refuge behind the walls of the great fortress.

 

"Not much has changed," I'd thought absently.

 

I had been looking forward to meeting once more with a man...

A friend...

Who had made such an unassumingly huge impact on my life.

 

Indeed, after Billings had given his presentation, and the contingent of journalists and correspondents gathered there had spent some time discussing global conflict and the factors that create and perpetuate it, we found ourselves sitting in the hotel at the long bar.

 

Soon we were toasting health, good fortune, and reunions.

 

“Well then,” Billings began. “I suppose I should get to the point and ask you what I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time.”

 

He paused and peered down into his glass of whiskey contemplatively.

 

I took a sip from his glass and encouraged the other to ask whatever he wanted to ask.

 

“It’s a bit off-putting to me to even have arrived at the existential point at which I feel the need to ask this, but the world is as it is, and I don’t know how much longer I have, so if there is something to be done, I suppose now is the time. I look around and I see everything and everyone coming apart… moving further apart rather than closer together. All this talk of the war in Ukraine...

Left versus right...

UFOs...

The 'refugee problem,'

Has only made it more of a compelling and urgent debate within my own mind. 

So… what I wanted to ask you...

Xavier Cross...

Was… is… what will it take to heal the world?”

 

I had just taken another sip of my whiskey and immediately spit it back into my glass.

 

I fixed my old friend with a glare and rather than succumbing to laughter merely asked, “Are you serious?”

 

Billings was generally a playful, witty sort, but in this instance, he said blankly, “I suppose I am.”

 

I set my glass down upon the bar and placed my hand on Billings' shoulder, “But why? Why are you asking that? And why for fuck’s sake are you asking me??

 

Billings lowered his head and seemed to be fighting back some tears, “Because despite everything I tried to teach you about maintaining a rational, detached approach to our profession… even to life, somehow you have lived it. You have bled it, and I have as e’er remained… a witness. I don’t want to die having only ever been a witness. Do you understand? Can you? Of course, you can’t. How could you? You are my counterpoint, you know? You are my antithesis in the rendering of deed. It’s not that I don’t feel. I assure you that I do. It’s not that I don’t wish for things to be different than they are. But I have too long remained an analytical observer to all that transpires around me… to the point that I have now come to suspect that I have been an observer of my own life. Not an actor… not a force for change and momentum in any direction… just a witness, and this is no longer acceptable to me.”

 

I'd considered this.

 

“Well, it seems that you already have the answer to your question regarding how one can at least try to heal the world.”

 

Billings smiled.

 

“But is it as simple as that? One simply has to do something to slip the chain?”

I considered this.

He went on...

 

“Of course, that is an over-simplification. But, if mortality is a consignment, and humanity represents an existential Gulag, of sorts, then in my days I have witnessed little more than recognition and analysis of the labours undertaken by others. I have not laboured alongside the others. I have done nothing to even attempt to break the chain. And it seems to me that the only chance one truly has to break the chain is from within it. One link in the chain must do something uncharacteristic... rare, even, to alter the functionality and the potential of the paradigm.”

I smiled.

"How long have you been waiting to discuss this with me?"

He blushed.

"Since Nadja."

Just then the barred wooden doors at the opposite end of the hall burst open and winds came to circle us all...

To adorn us.

The orchestra had rippled into shadow on the stage...

Released from...

Or freed unto some passage of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique, Opus 14"...

The torches set about the place swayed diabolically.

 

There was a woman sitting alone across from us at the long bar.

 

I had not noticed her before, but when I did, I immediately saw the resemblance.

 

Billings witnessed recognition dance across my eyes and raised his glass.

 

“To Nadja,” he said solemnly.

 

I remained silent. 

 

I took a long sip of my whiskey.

 

The woman smiled at me invitingly.

 

“That’s where all of this started for me… and for you, I think, by the way. It all started back there in Bosnia… when you just wouldn’t listen to me regarding the necessity for objectivity,” said Billings in a whimsical tone of admonition.

 

I turned to him and grinned wryly.

“Always a pleasure to be a source of inspiration, if not merely contemplation.”

 

The smile faded from Billings’ face, as he gazed back down into his glass...

And descended once more into his thoughts.

 

the maelstrom.3

Well, none of this would mean much if I didn't provide the background.

Perhaps at the last, none of it...

Does...

Mean...

Much.

Not to anyone, but me.

But...

When I think of myself then...

And people...

And the world...

I feel like there was a modicum of hope that textured things...

Like faerie dust...

Like magic.

And it was easy to think that way...

Until one became acquainted with reality...

With Nadja...

And God only knows how many others like her...

Who were sold...

Or for some sickening set of circumstances that came to be their...

Reality...

Sold themselves...

Into what amounted to...

Slavery.

From Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania...

Women and children were packed into carts, wagons, and trucks...

And shipped...

Everywhere.

They were shipped wherever demand was high...

Better when limited alternative commodities were manifest at whichever that location turned out to...

Be.

Regions and lands steeped in conflict were good.

War zones, as we like to call them.

Because we really do like to refer to them as such...

Because where there is war...

There is want...

Of...

Everything.

I had gone to the Balkans with Billings to develop a story on the ancillary effects of war on the "non-combatant."

Billings had been doing it for years.

He was even in Vietnam at the end.

The Falklands...

Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation...

Somalia...

He'd been in Iraq...

And then Bosnia...

With me.

Amid our investigations, the most compelling story...

The most sickening truth that we unearthed...

Was that of trafficking...

Of slavery.

And that is how we encountered first...

Marina...

"The Controller..." 

The Madame...

And then...

Nadja.

The Dayton Accord had recently been signed and now it was left to the signatories to ensure adherence to the terms of the Treaty that had...

However fleetingly...

Brought peace to the Balkans.

Billings and I had gone to meet some representatives from the Russian and US Armies, which were colocated at Ugljevik...

Not far from the Serbian border.

We were tracking some leads...

Rather cryptic, really...

About an international broker of everything...

Including human beings.

The locals had whimsically taken to calling him "the truth."

We were to meet them at a restaurant where the food was questionable but the "atmosphere" was...

Pleasing.

When we came into the place at the prescribed hour, indeed there were two beautiful girls dancing...

Fully clothed...

Numbly...

To some sampled, dance-variation of traditional Gypsy music.

There were groups of business men in all of the large tables in the centre of  the morbidly dank and dark place.

Our hosts had indeed preceded us and beckoned us over to their table in the corner at the back, right of the place.

Someone at the table next to ours was talking about a troop carrier having run over a mine on the road to Tuzla earlier in the day...

Everyone in the vehicle had died...

The men at the table ordered another round of drinks.

The music stopped and a new pair of girls languidly lurched onto the stage.

One of these girls was Nadja.

In my previous life...

Before that place...

I had not more than once or twice in my life entered such an establishment.

I had always been looking for more than the veneer...

Perhaps something...

Unattainable...

But as I was in most aspects of my way of living...

Things were black and white for me.

Good...

Bad...

Just...

Wrong...

Ugly...

And beautiful.

That was my initiation...

That war...

That woman...

Those...

Profanations...

the maelstrom.2

It was just a fortnight earlier that I had received the letter from Billings…

My journalistic mentor and colleague of many years…

My counterbalance…

A friend.

I’d never had many.

Nadja had written to him asking for our forgiveness…

Our…

Forgiveness.

She had never, to my knowledge, written to me, nor had she in any other way attempted to apologize or explain away the days and nights between us that went…

Before…

And then…

Away.

In that other…

War.

She had written to Billings.

Comical, really.

The most expressionless, lusterless, cynical clam known to me…

And yet…

A friend…

A friendship…

That could only have been forged amid the chaos we had experienced in all those horrid places…

Nadja had after all those years found him, and had sent him the letter which had prompted him to write me a letter of his own…

After all those years.

But despite the letter and what it said, all I could think about was the woman…

And how we burned.

I know that Billings told me not to get involved…

That I was to “remain neutral, and objective” at all times…

When she put her eyes on me…

And then her hands…

I had to touch her…

To kiss her…

To hold her down and be inside of her…

As a matter of life…

And death.

It started beneath strobe lights and then bled itself out…

As interlude…

Unto candlelight…

And then dawn.

In a horrid place.

The stench of reality…

Real…

Human…

Desperation…

All around.

It was that confluence of desperation…

Empathy…

And longing for some ineffable understanding of what it was the world wanted or expected from people, in general…

That made me susceptible to her.

It was all of that…

And her eyes…

Her lips.

Once I succumbed, I was like an animal with her.

For three months it was like that.

We were insatiable.

Billings tried everything to pull me back from the precipice of ruin, but I wanted nothing more or less than…

Nadja.

As I was recollecting all of this, the little bird at my side on the bar pecked me at the leg.

It looked up at me as if expectantly.

Nadja had long since turned off the lights and gone to bed.

The night’s chill encroached in its own interpretation of shelter.

The wind as a constant thief of solace.

I looked up at the sky.

The sickly moon had become audacious in its early angle, and seemed now scarlet…

Hewn.

I whispered unto bird,

“We wouldn’t want to spoil too soon

the pleasures we would want or will

we would not for flesh, or even moon

disrupt this surreal state of…

Still.”

the maelstrom.1

It was at the precise moment at which a sickly moon emerged from a cluster of undernourished clouds that I alighted on the rail just outside of the woman’s window.

I had done so just as a whisper of wind had stirred a skinny wreath of flowers and lighted bulbs that now absently clanked against the narrow frame.

The universe sighed as the indifference of the world offered itself up yet again unto the night.

Everything was as it was intended to be.

In a world in which intent bears little if any advantage over blind chance.

I had not been this close to the woman since that other war…

All those years before…

And now, a new one in which our shadow selves are bathed in the blood of the innocent for our tired human need to dominate and spread…

Like disease.

It all felt so…

Natural.

As if the events of both our lives and the winds themselves had conspired to bring me there…

Just then…

As if Truth itself had become manifest within…

A moment.

The winds rose again and swirled violently in and around the webs we weave in our fleeting times…

Like a chorus.

A frail, wayward little bird alighted at my side upon the rail…

Each of us gripping tightly against the wind.

We regarded one another with interest for a spell, and then…

As if we had come to some unspoken understanding…

To live.

We both turned to regard the woman in the window.

I had come a long way to be at that place.

I had come a long way…

Thousands and thousands of miles…

Years…

Space…

Just to see her again.

She was looking off into the distance…

Seemingly someplace there, herself.

The heavy earth beneath the rail and the structure that sheltered her trembled.

Had I come to greet her?

To embrace her as one does another with whom one has…

Transcended?

Had I come to embrace her as a fellow human being mired in the marathon of miseries inflicted or overcome?

Or…

Had I come to look her in the eyes far and deep…

As I choked the life out of her?

The lamplight in her room flickered, and then there resounded in that same distance the thunderous drone of mortar fire.

I regarded the little bird once more.

I took a letter from my cloak and held it fast in my fist.

The woman, Nadja, was now standing at the mirror that was pressed against the frail wall a few feet from the window.

She was wearing a skirt with the side clasp hanging open, and her brassiere.

She brushed her long blond hair methodically…

The sky-blue eyes that I remembered so well now cast unto some other frame of the infinite.

She seemed as alone as I had ever known her…

As if I had truly known her at all.

But these wars…

And the things we people do to survive them…

They take a toll…

On the soul.

I thought of the words that were written in the letter I held in my hands…

And I wondered…

Would it be more satisfying for me to kill her…

Or to simply greet her and then walk away…

And leave her to this…

Life.

an excerpt from the novel, "dissidence": part one

 

Xavier Cross struggled to open his eyes fully. 

 

He flitted his eyelids in protestation against the kind of bilious flat light that had always repulsed him. 

 

He felt the compulsion to raise a hand to his eyes to scratch and to calm them, but he found that he could move neither his hands nor his arms.

 

All around him he could hear animals breathing… panting… craving. 

 

His heart began to pound and an anxiety that bordered on terror began to constrict his chest. 

 

He could feel the space around him writhing languidly and expressing emptiness from tiny fissures in its fabric. 

 

Inasmuch, as he was able to raise neither his hands nor his arms, he frantically blinked his eyes in an attempt to better discern the dark, angular shapes that he perceived peering down at him from above.

 

It was difficult to breathe. 

 

He craned his head unto the static sky, wondering when and why the dark shapes looming above him seemed to have come closer.

 

The shapes were other people.

 

He could hear their voices…

 

Their laughter.

 

Proof of their disdain for him and anyone else who might have aspired toward the realization of an exquisite dream of which he had caught a fleeting glimpse when he had first closed his eyes.

 

No measure of reasonable, bearable light would sustain itself on that landscape.

 

Bitter tears filled his eyes but would not fall.

 

The space writhing around him was not space, at all.

 

He was surrounded by bodies.

 

Frozen, fading bodies.

 

Hastening unto death’s threshold.

 

Except for him.

 

He was consigned to remain…

 

Here.

 

Wherever it is we are.

 

He could smell the decomposition of the dream.

 

The onset of dire reality.

 

Of realism rendered by realists too mired in practicality to allow for any trace of magic in the world to disrupt the cycle of obedience to the rules of humankind.

 

The dark shapes above had come just enough into focus for Cross to have understood that they were soldiers.

 

They were soldiers on one side of a conflict, when clearly… he and the other bodies around him were on the other side of it.

 

Whatever that conflict was.

 

Whatever ideas or beliefs a person can have to get one’s self shot and tossed into a mass grave in some pale, obscured place.

 

It occurred to him that he could not move because he had been tightly stitched into a cloth sack.

 

There was no way out.

 

He began to writhe along with the rest.

 

Soon he was moving in unison with countless bodies that had once been filled with life, but had become as cold, dead hosts.

 

They writhed as if in the rendering of a belated complaint against the very nature of the world.

 

He felt the compulsion to close his eyes forever and to give in to the truth of things… 

 

The reality of the way things…

 

Are…

 

No matter how sickening.

 

“It’s just who we are,” some voice risen on a gasp of sulphur muttered in his head.

 

“It’s just what we are.”

 

And then…

 

As if he were being called back by something… 

 

Other…

 

Called back from an abstraction in which the dull but persistent intravenous induction of nausea and acceptance scraped like a needle at his epidermis so as to finally penetrate it and reach the marrow…

 

He awakened.