JUMPER AWAY

You both eat in complete silence, not saying much, not thinking much. There are sausages on the table, a full ashtray, a big plate of potato salad and some glasses of beer. You feel somehow better than the other days, but watching your father eating his peas one at a time makes everything harder. You want to ask why in the hell he’s eating his peas one at a time, but you can’t find the will to start this topic. So you both keep your eyes on the screen, chewing, swallowing, watching, swallowing, watching, chewing, and watching. Not long after, you see a man on the screen whose been launched up to 38,900 meters in a capsule attached to a helium balloon. You are somehow excited about this and turn up the volume. 

You put yourself desperately in that little capsule, and think about making a playlist or something; you don’t exactly know what you’re thinking about. Something bright, unexpected, fresh. 

Your father starts to pay attention, finally, murmurs and mutters to himself: 
‘What bullshit,’ 

You take a glance at him and witness how he’s still eating his peas one at a time. 

He glances back at you, takes a sip of his beer and again: 

‘You know this is bullshit…’ 

By the time you have a chance to respond, you hear a voice from the TV: 

‘Start the cameras, and our guardian angel will take care of you.’ 

Your father sloshes down the bottle and burbs loudly. 
‘If only your mother could see this. She’d say the same. Mankind leaped upon the moon, now they’re jumping back from a capsule. What a disappointment….’ 

You say nothing and take a sip of your beer, and the man on the TV says: 
‘I wish you could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to be up really high to understand how small you are… I’m coming home now…’ 

‘Yeah, you better should stuntman…’ 

And without batting your eyelid, you watch his uncontrolled spin in space, no sense of direction, completely homeless for about four minutes. Your father pops the last pea and stands up, snorts and goes to his bedroom. For the last time you take a look to the TV, and watch this man, dropping his knees and punching the air.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Music

The vinyl shop was empty. He was spending his entire day behind the cashier: Accepting new records, signing another contracts, making another coffee, and waiting for a customer. It was before noon, when the entrance door opened all of a sudden. A man in a suit, two cell phones in two hands, and a five year old kid.  

‘’Hey baby bro,’’ yelled the man, in a hurry.  

He replied ‘’Hey,’’ and faded the music. 

‘’Looking good! Nice place you’ve got here! How is everything! Look I wish I could talk more, but I have this meeting to catch, you wouldn’t mind to look after Jr., would you? It’s only for two nights…’’ 

 ‘’Look… I don’t think it’s such a good idea… You know… I barely can look after myself… And where have you been anyways? It’s been months since I have talked to you…’’ 

The cell phone rang. ‘’Yes! I’m on my way! Yes! I’ve signed the contract. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Yes! Everything’s fine. Yes! I’ll see you there! Bye!’’ 

‘’Fuck you Lloyd! You don’t call, you don’t answer, now you’re giving me your kid. Where’s your wife? Have you called Mom and Dad?’’ 

‘’I can’t call them right now! I have this business to make! And Jr. promised me to be in his best behavior, right Jr.?’’ 

Nodding his head, looking elsewhere. 

‘’Just go…’’ 

Unearthly silence. 

‘’You know who I am?’’ he asked. 
Nodding. 
‘’Who am I?’’ 
‘’The uncle who likes music.’’ 
‘’Are you hungry?’’ 
Shaking his head. 
‘’Do you have anything to play?’’ 
Nodding. 
‘’Are you scared of me?’’ 
Shaking his head. 

Unearthly silence. 
‘’Do you like music?’’ 
Nodding. 
‘’Who do you like?’’ 
Biting his lips. 
‘’I like the Panda song…’’ 
‘’The panda song? What else?’’ 
Biting his lips harder. 
‘’I like the Elephant song…’’ 
‘’Elephant song? What in the hell are you talking about?’’ 
A soft voice: ‘’I have the CD if you want…’’ 
‘’Give me that,’’ 

A stupid panda on the cover, grinning with other animals. Like most of the days, he inserted the CD, leaned on his back, took a sip of his coffee, and kept smiling the rest of the day to the kid, listening the Panda Song.

The End

Two strangers are trying to understand each other. 

X: I was sixteen when I first listened ‘The End’. 
Y: Really? I never clearly understood the song. But it tempted me to like them. Especially Morrison. 
X: I hate his shadow. 
Y: What do you mean? 
X: Ray Manzarek is such a great musician. It was unfair that the whole band had to quit when Morrison attempted suicide. 
Y: I doubt about that. We still don’t know whether it was suicide or a simple overdose night. 
X: That’s not the point. He was always under the spotlights. The others were somehow excluded. 
Y: Excluded from what? 
X: From Morrison. 
Y: Morrison was The Doors. 

The End.

Voodoo Children

Everything starts with a flash of lightning across the sky, the earliest hours of a misty smoky morning. Every single child in the city walks over from their bed to their steamed-up window and trace symmetrical figures, knowing the fact that they can erase it all with the back of their hand and look outside. As they shape figures and forms on the steamy window with their little fingers, the second flash of lightning shakes the infinite air. For a brief moment all of them are scared, but still, they don’t erase the whole steam of the window, still struggling with their first unconscious moments of this early morning. They have crust round their eyes, dirt under their fingernails, and still drunk of the tale they have seen in pictures the night before. So they decide to spread their palms out on their knees and wait for the third lightning.

The smoky windows between the children and the city: Paralyzed by the obscurity of the scenery, they erase the whole steam without waiting for the third lightning. For a few seconds everything is clear and crisp, and their wide-open eyes scan the whole image, as the steam would slowly show up again: 

Croaky ship horns // 

booming through the fog and heading towards East //

seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels //

tens of thousand identical apartment houses //

discolored by dust and rust //

strong black smoke rising from the chimneys //

sleepy sailors scrubbing their decks //

a crowd of people in identical black coats //

rushing somewhere along the dilapidated brick shells //

some kids spitting to each other //

the ferry and the wind changing their direction //

the smoke rising from the funnel //

gliding and swirling over the Bosphorus like Aladdin’s carpet //

the gravestones of forgotten cemeteries //

slowly sinking under the aged earth and vanishing for good as if they were never born and died //

a dry rain of millions of tiny black particles with the smell of burnt minerals //

empty-ramshackle wooden houses and the semi-darkness of the bleak houses //

twisted cobblestone streets and the rush of steam pouring up from the pavements //

leafless trees trembling here and there //

and street-cats sitting on wharfs waiting for the fishermen.

An exquisitely tranquil period of the city: A brief moment of standing still before the third lightning. A tremendous clap of thunder and a rain that pour down without mercy. Everybody wakes up. 

Saturn Devouring His Son

Beyond a shadow of doubt, he knew the moment when he started to walk after midnight along the Bosphorus shore, that the sound of his own footsteps would synchronize against the wallowing invisible light that came pouring down around his blood rushing brain. A strange and unexplainable moment would soon arrive, as he could barely absorb the infinite sky, a barrage of liquid bullets, gusting unmercifully against his eyes. A few steps later, he would arrive at the foot of the lighthouse that was spreading a strong and dimensionless wave of light towards the ferries, going up and down between East and West, the unending dilemma of two different songs.

He would pass one by one:

the patient immigrant pimps striding up and down in search of one last drunken tourist//
the beggars murmuring to themselves in the same spot night after night //
the young pop singers imitating American psychedelic bands in cheap nightclubs //
the gipsy women who has been selling the same kind of flowers for the past twenty years //
the sidewalks crowded with women lined up against the crumbling city walls //
the silent group of men //
frustrated students and bored husbands //
and old ladies watching them from balconies //
sipping their tea and showing their breasts spilling out of low-cut bras //
and he would pass them one by one //
dragging long shadows with him //
as if he was pulling the blanket of night over the entire city.

His battered and tired body would intertwine with the poverty of the city, and like most of the city dwellers, he would enter into a labyrinth of a bright daydream that would begin to blow through his head like a multicolored summer breeze. Beyond measure, his steps would lead him nowhere. He would curse to himself and the world he belonged to, for a while, with an incoherent babble, and it was then, approximately, when he would burn his cigarette between his second and third fingers of his left hand and disgorge a large puff towards the crumbled city walls and would glance his eyes over the same beggar. ′′At last,′′ he would think, ′′a genuine madman in the street, someone who doesn’t need a phone to talk to himself.′′

He couldn’t make out everything what he was saying. Thinking better of it at the last moment, he would put his other hand into his deep pocket, flung his half-eaten sandwich to the beggar. Without any acknowledge, instantly, the beggar would start to eat the sandwich with a ravenous anguish, ignoring the falling pieces. By the time he would arrive at the end of the street, he would catch the beggars’ eyes, and what he was seeing was nothing but a giant who was eating his son.

His steps would grant him into a dizzying freedom, a bright new world would open up before him. A strange comfort, a great drive into the cloaked pale lights of the streetlamps.