Le chateau de vent

Part1 | Part 2 | Part 3 She comes in and closes the door. I can see her eyes quickly inspect the room, like a cat. She must feel something is not right. I'm sitting in a corner, knees up to my chest, silently breathing. I don't think she has seen me. She walks through the room and pulls a lever or something. I can really see it very well. A door slides open silently and she disappears in the kitchen. "Would you like tea or coffee?" she yells. There's no one in the room. The front door is closed. I start getting nervous. "Hellooo there, I'm talking to you." Her head pops out of the kitchen and she's staring me straight into the face. "Tea or coffee?" A feeling of uneasiness spreads through my stomach when I look into her stale blue eyes. She looks dangerous and tough and I'm invading her territory.

"You don't understand." she said. "It's not about beauty." Beauty is one one small aspect of what is hidden and can be revealed. "I need the imperfections. They function as gates to see something more than the flat reality of a moment." "But an imperfection can also be beautiful..." I answer. "Yes, exactly," She pauzed briefly, "but not necessarily. Beauty can make you experience things. Without the sense of beauty you wouldn't see, hear, feel or taste them. But beauty is not that strong. It's been abused, over-used, turned upside down, faked and forged. It's lost some of its power." I sighed and thought of ancient greek art and how its beauty still touches me. She continued, ignoring me. "In Asia, people do not pull out the hairs growing from moles or birthmarks like we do. You can see people with a birthmark or mole on their face and a string of black or grey hairs sprouting out of it. I have seen mo...

* He When I was little, people took me for a boy. They always did and I didn’t really mind. I wore boys’ clothes and played football. And then I discovered I was into girls. No big deal. My coming out wasn’t that hard. I had my first girlfriend and my first broken heart. The man of the newspaper shop still called me "sir", although I was 16 already. I still didn’t mind. Regularly my best friend and I would have these hilarious dressing up sessions in our parents’ bedroom. It was awesome. We would end up parading around the house as two gentlemen in suit and tie and mimicked all the men we knew. Then my friend got seriously involved with a girl who told her she was behaving too masculine and she stopped dressing up. We still talked about it often though and I think she really missed our sessions. I never stopped doing it. It gave me a kick to invent a character and adjust my features until I resembled the man I had in mind perfectly. I got really good at it and learned how to ...

"Sometimes I wish I was married." she sighed. "Why?" "I would love to be part of a dual entity. The hypenated combination of 2 names. The illusion that you are no longer alone in this world. It's so easy to just give in. To give up all that you are and become part of that person you love. It's an almost religious belief, beyond all rationality: to trust another person with your life. To hand over the steering wheel voluntarily to a pirate. To risk being pushed up a small wooden gangway and into the sea, after being stripped of treasures and ornaments." "The hyphen is there for a reason." I tell her. "In our world only genes can unite. There is no everlasting, complete, balanced union of passion and love, only collaboration and support or hate and battle." I pause. "I was married once, you know." She looks me in the eye, surpised. "I shoudn't have done it, I know. But I wanted the fairytale. I liked the beginni...

Dear Mr. Tunick, On saturday May 7th, you plan to photograph your new work of art in Bruges. Coincidence, but that day is Gay Pride day in Brussels. So - rain or shine - it's choosing between art or pride... What a pity. I have this vision of 10 000 naked gays :-) Participate in Bruges, Belgium for an installation by contemporary artist Spencer Tunick Take advantage of this unique opportunity on Saturday, May 7, 2005 - rain or shine. Participants will only be nude for a short period of time and in exchange for taking part, you’ll receive a photograph of the installation by the artist. Participants will be contacted closer to the date of the installation with further instructions and arrival time. Only participants will be allowed in the vicinity of the art event. more info: http://www.corpusbrugge05.be/pages/start.asp

Tuesday Apil 12, controversial an radical feminist Andrea Dworkin (58) died. Check out the profile in The Guardian . I started reading her website . Dworkin completely opposes pornography. I don't watch porn so I haven't really thought about it that much. I never claimed porn was bad because I don't want to be regarded as a conservative or anti-sexual, but Dworkin is right. It's not about conservatism, prudishness or narrowmindedness but about how women are depicted. Check this article , The Porn Myth, by Naomi Wolf. It's about Dworkin's views. (via bnox)

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. An ideal moment to reread this marvelous poem. And it's on the internet, notes and all !

I took some time off last week, hoping to relax and unwind while finding my way through an endless maze of small and very old streets in a sunny southern town. After some time I knew the maze by heart and could blindly find my way, but the more I strolled around and led my companions to unknown corners and hidden treasures, the more I felt it. The feeling. Inside. This wasn't me. A totally new feeling crept into my brain. A tormented, contradicting, ever-changing moodiness. It started slowly and at first I thought it was just my brain getting even with my body, because I was neglecting my own personality, under the influence of my older and perhaps rather dominating companions. Because I was walking around with my hands in the pockets of my jeans for minutes without noticing. Usually I mind not doing the hands routine, because it's so cheap and macho. So I reckoned the gloominess was an effect of neglect, of posing like something other then I was. But the feeling remained. Even...

A reply to this: http://mastuvu.typepad.com/monuments/2005/03/dust.html Home is where the heart is, they say. I never left home. Maybe my heart is stacked somewhere on the worn wooden shelves of the public library, where I work. Neatly classified under "medical". I was born here and when my time will end, I know it will be here. I don’t care much about travelling or moving to a big city, like so many young people do now. I prefer a quiet life of candlelight evenings and walks along the coastline. After a storm you can find treasures there. Silver spoons with imprints of a foreign ship’s name, bones of seagulls tied up in seaweed looking like precious jewellery. And once in a while a bottle. Intact. When I long for something more, I have my books. They are my children, my lovers, my companions on cold nights. Sometimes I read them tenderly, my fingers caressing the spine while my eyes gaze into an endless new world. Sometimes I devour them urgently, driven by a hopeless need...

Silver screen. yes. Another story (if you like the dirty kind, because let's face that's what most of you want...) at Dykes and the City's Free-for-all-friday . It's called "Shower scene".

Inside it's cold. I can feel a draft streaming along my legs when I close the door. I enter a small living room. It's still dark. The curtains are drawn. Everywhere I look on the floor, the walls and the sofa against the wall on the right I see carpets. Thick, wool carpets embroidered with the strangest motives of hunters and helicopters and colourful exotic flowers and riffles and baseball caps. Shiny black tattoo-like designs and ancient alchemist's signs on wine red ruggs. There is not a single space on the wall or the floor that's not covered. Next to the sofa is a big rock, granite. I assume it serves as a table. There's an empty coffee cup balancing on it, cigarettes and a water pipe. There's a table and a rack against the left wall barely supporting all the books stacked on it. Some big and dignified with leather covers and in between and atop of them old worn and torn paperbacks. There must be a door somewhere. I have to hide.

Run away from all your boredom Run away from all your whoredom and wave Your worries and cares Goodbye All it takes is one decision A lot of guts, a little vision to wave Your worries and cares Goodbye Placebo - Slave to the wage

There’s a million questions I have asked her in my mind, but now I don’t know what to say to her. I’m slowing down, counting my steps. Then, finally she opens the door, carrying a big crate of empty bottles. She curses when she can’t pull the door closed behind her. She tries to swing it shut with her foot but it bounces back again. She starts towards the street with the bottles. She doesn’t notice me. A man passing yells at her and she looks up. They know each other. He crosses the street and she puts down the crate. It’s about 50 meters towards her front door. I do not hesitate. She’s standing at the street corner and talking to the man, nervously hopping from one leg onto the other. Hands in her pockets. It’s cold. She laughs and kicks the crate with the tip of her shoe. The grass is covered with ice and I hear it crack under my feet, when I approach her front door. Nobody sees me when I enter. All sounds are muffled in the grey morning weather.

I’m not a stalker, far from it, but I must admit she's been provoking an unhealthy obsession in me. For some weeks now she makes me adjust my routines. For example when I go to work, I get off the bus one stop early so I can walk past her apartment, hoping she might come out so I can see her. She lives in the apartment block next to where I work. It’s a shithole, a social welfare apartment of the worst kind. The car park is a garbage dump and the walls of the apartments look like they’re made of paper, graffiti tags scrawled all over them at eye-height and a bit lower imprints of dirty shoes from angry adolescents. The whole street is immersed in a feeling of desolation and hopelessness. It must be horrible to live there. If I’m lucky, once a month on Tuesday, she puts out the empty bottles just when I pass. She’s blonde, of average height. Her hair is short and spikey. She wears trainers and almost no jewellery, except for a series of earrings in her left earlobe. She's not wh...

I’m on top of her, leaning on one arm and moving my hips and body against her so I touch as much of her as possible. Her skin is soft. She’s moving too, close against me. We’re rubbing harder, feeling the skin touching. Pressure shifting. She makes me sigh and breathe hard in her neck. I know my hipbone is not in the right position to stimulate her well enough. But that doesn’t matter. I don’t want to fuck her straight from the hip. I want to slither along her body, slide into the curves and curl up in her arms. I want to be wet and sweaty and smell the sex. I want to forget time. I can feel lust crawling under our skin, warm and glowing but making me shiver. Is it because we fuck without dick that sex becomes such an experience of total freedom, of complete abandonment of everything we know? I massage her lower back, press my fingers into her spine, where the Chinese believe the power of the dragon lives. Because fire and passion do not live in the heart but there between...

It has been awfully cold last night in my cardboard box underneath the Gare St.Lazare . The trains make a terrible noise because everything has been shrinking during the night, widening the gaps between the rails and stretching powercables. My poodles get desperate from listening to the high piercing sounds of trains braking. When I take them out for a stroll in the fresh snow, they shiver and start lifting up their tiny feet as high as possible. That's ok, because so do I. We parade around in the snow like Arabian mares, ready for a horse-training championship.

The story doesn't end. What really happened was that a woman looked out the window of her office and saw 2 big apartment blocks. She had looked at them daily for years, several times a day. But that day she needed a story. To get her out. A dead body to clear away the guilt. To wash away - no - to prove that certain parts of her life were a fiction. A fiction that disappeared in the powdered cracks on the faces of old women she watched at noon in the sandwich bar drinking coffee and talking. Widows. Always at the same table, in the shadow of the ugly concrete apartment blocks. A fiction of things to come or things never to happen. She watched the old lady with the black dog and dignified hairdo drag herself along the pavement with a walker. Slowly moving, struggling with clenched teeth. Nobody looked, nobody ever cared whether she would finally make it to the sandwich bar or not. So every afternoon the woman who wrote the story nodded at the old women in the sandwich bar. Sh...

Dykes & the City and The girlfriend threw me a stick. 1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer? Less than 20 MB and all corrupt 2. The cd you last bought is: Simultaneously: Superdiscount - Superdiscount 2 and Neil Young - Greatest hits (because rust never sleeps) 3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message Horace Andy - Money 4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you: - Prince - When doves cry - PJ Harvey - The dancer (from: To bring you my love) - Most songs by Patti Smith - Tindersticks - Rented Rooms (from: Curtains) - Buffalo Tom - Tailllights fade 5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why? - Jo because she likes music - My 2 poodles Jean-Jacques and Jean-Pierre

Monthly forecast for January 2005 (from Yahoo) The 1st, everything might be a little hazy. That is, things aren't quite what they seem. But what can you expect after that wild masked New Year's ball? If you went with a cat mask and somehow ended up coming home as a peacock ..... What are they talking about? I can't remember that. Oui, oui, I'm writing. Still struggling with the dead body.

Two years you said of being alone. Two years of one night stands, how will that change you? How have you changed me? We need a lot of trust. Trust without guts. I went to a clairvoyant yesterday and after she had laid out my cards I asked her for some. "You've been stealing from your partner, haven't you?" She laughed. She could see right through me. "You're trying to build a fortress on a vulcano, dear." She went into the back room and I heard her open a drawer. She muttered. "It's been done, though. It has been done." When she returned, redheaded and a bit sweaty, she gave me an on old and dirty plastic bag. "Here you go, this is all I can miss right now." Outside I looked in the bag. It was filled with flakes of skin. Thousands, maybe millions of yellowish and transparent pieces of human skin waste carefully dried and flattened.

The enigma of the dead woman's body is not yet solved, but meanwhile you can enjoy a new ( and complete) story at www.dykesandthecity.com . Click here to read the story "Madrid".

Who wrote the story? It’s hard to tell. I never thought of a beginning or and end until she came to visit me. I was staring out of the kitchen window when she rang the doorbell. I do like women in uniform. You laughed at it sometimes and you’d call out "Oh, god, how can you find that attractive. A god damn uniform." I know it’s only appearance. But that’s what makes it fascinating. You long to know what’s underneath. And I don’t mean purely bodyworks. The individual. Behind silver buttons and ill-fitting trouwsers. Worn-out shirts that show your bra when you forgot to put a t-shirt under it. It was late when she came round. And she wasn't alone. A big police bloke followed her like a dog, writing down everything we said into a small notebook. She apologized for disturbing that late but they were doing a second round of interviews in the apartment block with regard to the dead body. She stood near the window in the kitchen looking out and asked me where I was the nigh...

Claire and Sarah had been a couple, not long after Sarah had started her career as an investigating officer. Claire had asked her out for a drink one evening and after a few glasses had boldly seduced her. Not quite what Sarah had expected. It had been her first time with a woman. They had been together for a few months, but Claire was factual, intellectual. She liked long silences and quiet evenings at home. After a while Sarah started going out alone, looking for thrills, challenges, competition. She needed to live on the edge. She loved darkness and felt most alive between 2 and 4 a.m. It had been just a small click in her head one night. She was hanging out a the wrong bar, drinking whisky cola to drown an edgy feeling of uneasiness. Flirting too much. She went home with the blonde tart sitting next to her. At 7 a.m. in the morning Claire had called. "Where are you? I just woke up and you aren’t in bed?" She hardly remembered anything about the night, except that the...

Her body was undiscovered territory. I knew from looking into her dark eyes that underneath those layers of clothing her olive skin was burning to be touched. She kept kissing me slowly, tongue and lips thick and wanting and delicately searching an answer. We were already establishing a rhythm and every time her delicious tongue slowly slid into my mouth I could feel desire flowing into me like lava. Through the pit of my stomach and lower still down between my legs. She dragged me down onto the bed, moaning a little when I answered her kisses with long thrusting movements.