Either Mad or Both

I used to pass by his place on my way into the next village when I was walking over the mountain, rather than going the long way around in the car. In this part of the Black Forest the mountains are not as steep and high as they are further south, but gentler and more rounded, with a plateau at the top. He lived on one of these on a clearing in the forest, surrounded by dark conifers and almost two miles from the village. There was no proper road leading to it, just a rough forest track. His house was little more than an animal shelter without running water or electricity. But he had a stove in it to keep warm in the winter, which often is severe this high up. There must have been plenty of times when his well would have been frozen and he had to melt snow or the long icicles hanging down from his roof for water.

   People called him Dominic but I don’t think that was his real name. We didn’t know anything about him, where he had come from or where he went after he left from here. He just arrived one day and settled into that hut in the middle of the forest. The owners let him stay in exchange for him keeping an eye on their cattle which they brought up there during the summer months for grazing. He had a small vegetable patch and kept a few hens and a cat for company. That was all. He rarely left the clearing, and if he did, it was only for a walk through the woods. I don’t think I ever saw him in the village. He didn’t seem to have any need for money or company or for conversation. As far as I know he never actually spoke to anybody. Maybe he was dumb.

   Some people thought that he was mad, that some shock in his life had unsettled him so much that he couldn’t bear human company anymore. Others said he was a dosser that had never done an honest day’s work in his life. But many people believed him to be a saint. They were the ones who would walk all the way out to him with their ailments and worries, because he had the reputation of being able to heal them. He never took any money for it but people left food or other things he might need. Somehow he seemed to manage to survive on that.

    I brought my daughter to him once when she was seven or eight years old. She had been suffering from stomach upsets for a while and missed school a lot but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. It was a cool, bright spring morning and Dominic was outside when we arrived, turning over the soil in his vegetable plot. He stopped working when he saw us approaching and met us in front of the house. I explained to him what my daughter’s problem was. He stopped me before I got to the end of what I was going to say and gave her a brief, searching look. Then he put one hand on her abdomen and the other on her chest bone. His eyes had a peculiar intensity that was both inwardly collected and highly alert at the same time. There was a profound silence around us, a sense of being enfolded in this stillness. The moment couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds before he turned around and went into the house. I didn’t know if this meant that the treatment was finished and we should leave, but he returned after a while with a small bottle of a very dark and syrupy liquid that he gave to me. He dismissed us with a nod, without even giving me the chance to thank him.

   I had no idea what was in the bottle or how to give it to my daughter - there were no instructions with it. But I figured that since it was so small and the liquid so thick it was also probably quite potent, so I gave her only a teaspoon of it every now and then. She hated it, apparently it tasted vile, but it helped. The stomach upsets stopped after a while and she hardly missed any more school.

   I went back to Dominic a few days later on my way to the village. I had brought some food, a loaf of bread, a Gruyere cheese and some butter. He was in the garden but didn’t look up, although I am sure he had been aware of me as soon as I came out from the trees. Again I felt this profound stillness about him and as if even the briefest of greetings would shatter it to pieces irrevocably. So I didn’t say anything and just left the bag of food on the bench in front of his house before continuing on my way.

   I saw him many more times after that but I never spoke to him again and he never gave any indication that he recognised me. Then one day, he disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived and many of us felt much the poorer for his absence. The house is derelict now and there are weeds growing in his vegetable garden but his restfulness is still lingering though many years have passed since then. Sometimes, on a sunny day, I sit down there now and feel the loss of somebody I didn’t really know at all.

Chameleon no Longer

Whenever I visited my father I went with a gloomy sense of foreboding. Since he had moved into sheltered accommodation for the elderly I hardly recognised him anymore. For as long as could remember he had lived the most ordinary and unobtrusive life; he was a good and dutiful son to his parents, always did as he was told and uncomplainingly led the life that they had mapped out for him without much imagination on his part. After finishing school he entered the family business as a tax accountant and all throughout my childhood he worked long hours for what was even then considered a ridiculous amount of money. But his father was a strict man and demanded a lot of him. The only act of defiance he ever committed was marrying my mother. She came from a working class background and was considered by her in-laws not respectable enough - they thought my father could have done better and held the marriage against them for as long as they lived. Nevertheless, my father continued to be a dutiful son and a conscientious husband and father, although my sister and myself never saw much of him - he left our upbringing completely to our mother.

   I don’t think he ever did anything unpredictable in his life. After coming home from work late, he would watch television in the evening and on the weekends he would potter around the house and garden without ever actually doing very much. Any decisions that had to be made, like where to go on holidays or whether to buy a new living room suite, he always left to my mother. He was devastated when she left him after twenty-five years of marriage and I don’t think he ever understood what it was that finally made her leave. He had been too quiet and accommodating and she needed somebody to measure herself against. She was longing for a spark in her life, even if it was only the occasional flash of bad temper. After she left he became even more quiet and withdrawn and when he retired he hardly went out anymore at all, apart from going shopping and his daily walk around the park. I think, often I was the only person he spoke to all week, when I came to visit him on a Sunday afternoon.

   But a few weeks after he had moved into the retirement village he started to change. He hadn’t been too happy at first and grumbled about the nosiness and inquisitiveness of the other inhabitants, especially the women. He was used to being left to himself. But then one day I was greeted at the door by a huge, shaggy dog, the size of a small pony. It barked at me in a loud and frighteningly deep voice before putting its huge paws on my shoulders and looking down on me from its great height. I staggered backwards until I hit the wall.

   “What the hell is that?”

   “Oh, that is Scipio. I forgot to tell you about him. I got him from the animal rescue centre. He is harmless. Get down Scipio, good boy.”

   “But a dog this size! Couldn’t you have got something smaller, a Jack Russell maybe? Besides, you don’t even like dogs.”

   “I like Scipio. He is good company - he doesn’t talk too much and he protects the house.”

   The dog seemed to have given my father a new confidence. Next time I called he announced that he was going to join the aerobic class in the nearby health centre.

   “Dad! You can’t do that.”

   “Why not? It’ll keep me fit.”

   I didn’t know what to say without stating bluntly that I thought he was too old for it and might hurt himself badly. “You don’t know what it’s like - there’ll be only women there and they’ll be all much younger than you.”

   “So? So much the better. I am going to enjoy myself.”

   There was no way he would let me talk him out of it. But a few days later he rang me and asked in a very matter-of-fact voice whether I would do some shopping for him. I stopped myself from asking what was wrong and told him I would call over later that afternoon. When I let myself into his flat he lay stretched out on the floor with Scipio looking rather mournful and dejected beside him. He wouldn’t tell me what had happened but he never mentioned the aerobic class again. Instead he was planning to take piano lessons.

   “But you haven’t got a piano.”

   “I can get one of those electronic things, what do you call them? Keyboards. I always regretted that I never learned an instrument when I was younger.”

   He must have had second thoughts about the music lessons. But a few weeks later he acquired an easel and was filling his little flat with huge canvases of abstract paintings in the most strong and vibrant colours. Not for him to be dabbling with dainty, little watercolours, he said, he would do it right, or not at all. I couldn’t remember him ever having looked at a painting in his life but I didn’t say anything. I guessed that he would soon run out of space to put his creations and would give it up again.

   Over the next months he tried out a lot of different things: carpentry, gardening (although on a very small scale since he had only a patio; but he did manage to grow some tomatoes that summer) and I believe, a couple of times he even joined the women in their patchwork quilting group. When I arrived one day to find a brand new racing bike outside his front door, I got seriously worried. It was one of those flimsy machines with low handlebars and pedals that strapped in your feet. His eyesight was not good anymore and I had visions of him weaving in and out of heavy traffic without being able to see what he was doing, bringing himself and others into danger. But like everything else, he tired of it after a while and gave it up. Only Scipio stayed with him as a loyal companion.

   I had been on holidays for a while and had just arrived back home when my father rang to ask me over for dinner the next evening. I was immediately suspicious - my father hated cooking and barely managed for himself, let alone for somebody else. But of course I said I’d be delighted and that I was looking forward to it.

   When I arrived the next evening with a bottle of wine I found my father in the kitchen amongst much of sizzling and steaming and muttering under his breath. The place looked so chaotic that I didn’t feel qualified to offer him any help. The table had been set for three people.

   “I didn’t know that you had invited Natalie as well.” I said to him. As far as possible, he tried to avoid having my sister and myself over at the same time, preferring to deal with us separately.

   “It’s not Natalie that is coming. There is somebody else I would like you to meet.” He gave me three wineglasses and a corkscrew to put on the table. “She is called Miriam and is one of the nurses here.”

   The doorbell rang and he asked me to open the door for him. Apparently, dinner was at a critical stage of completion or, more likely, he found the situation a bit too tricky to handle and preferred us to sort it out between ourselves. Scipio had run ahead of me and was wagging his tail. Outside stood a plump, middle-aged woman with a kind and gentle face, maybe a few years older than myself. She looked as nervous and uncomfortable as I felt myself. In her confusion she greeted Scipio first, who obviously was more familiar to her, before introducing herself to me.

   “Nice to meet you. Come in,” I said. “Dad is just putting the finishing touch to the dinner. It shouldn’t be long.”

    She smiled pleasantly, “Yes, he is a very good cook.”

   My father came out of the kitchen, carrying a casserole dish. “Hello Miriam. I see you have been getting to know each other.” Which was a shameless exaggeration. I felt like a fish out of water and about as communicative.

   “That smells delicious,” I said, nevertheless.

   “It’s a lentil bake. I hope you like it.” A lentil bake? My father - a vegetarian? What would he be up to next? He put the dish on the table and opened the bottle of wine.

   “Sit down,” he said but remained standing himself after he had poured the wine for us. “I, that is, we would like to tell you something.” Oh God, here it comes, I thought.

   “Miriam and I are going on a world tour next month. I want to see Egypt and Peru and Kashmir before I die. We’ll be away for about half a year.”

   I suddenly felt as if he had pulled the rug from under my feet and didn’t know what to say. “That’s fantastic. I hope you are going to enjoy yourselves,” I managed finally.

   “ I ‘m sure we will, that is - would you look after Scipio whilst I am away?”

Memoir of an Amnesiac

Things haven't been going too well lately. We are coping, don't get me
wrong, but to tell the truth, I have seen better. Time was, I wouldn't
even have looked at stuff like this. In vino veritas, as they used to
say, but then the wine had been good and honest and came from France,
Chateau Latour, that type of thing. Not that I could ever afford that,
but you get what I mean. God only knows, what they are putting in this
Peruvian plonk, tastes like battery acid, but I'm getting there, just
another small glass and I'll see more clearly.

   I shouldn't have taken the job in that piss hole of a factory, with
that bastard of a foreman. I always knew I could do better than that,
but what choice did I have? When it comes to the crunch, you take what
you get, even though you know that it'll be no good. He had it in for
me, always gave me the shittiest jobs, putting electrical circuits
together, I am asking you, and at such a quota that no sane human being
could manage, 350 of them an hour, more if you wanted to get your
piecework bonus. I never got that, not even once, nobody could. I
worked my arse off in that place and look, where it got me. The young,
good-looking ones, on holiday jobs, they got the cushy jobs, sparkplugs
and that, so easy, you could do twice the required amount. They were
alright so, came around to help me out during nightshift, it was handy
like that, no foreman snooping around to make sure everybody stayed at
their own machine. What did it matter anyhow, as long as the job got
done? Still, even with their help I was always short at the end of the
week, didn't even manage the minimum wage, and me having three kids at
home and no man in the house. I s'pose, that's what he held against me,
three kids and no father for any of them. But it wasn't my fault they
buggered off as soon as they found out that I was knocked up. I was no
spring chicken anymore by then.

   I blame his wife, she set him up against me, that stupid old cow,
sitting in the office, all warm and cosy and looking down on the rest
of us, who worked on the floor. She was ogling me every time I passed
her, as if I was up to something and she had to keep her beady eye on
me. It was the young ones she wanted to watch, not me, I had enough to
do to fill my quota. But she knew she wasn't a patch beside him, that
scrawny runt of a woman with her crooked teeth and her glasses the size
of goldfish bowls. He was handsome, could hold his own with anybody,
though he was in his late fifties, tall and straight as he was with
greying temples. He looked distinguished. I couldn't bear to see them
together, the insolence on her face whenever she looked at me. It
should have been her they sacked, not me with three kids and no other
income besides the pittance I earned in that kip of a place, said, they
couldn't tolerate behaviour like that on their premises. Hah, I had to
laugh, 'premises', that stinking, dilapidated shack, and look at the
scum that was working there! God knows, I tried my best but there is
only so much a woman can put up with.

   Christ almighty, would you look at the time! The kids'll be back
from school and me still in my dressing gown and not a bite to eat in
the house, should be doing something, I s'pose. Ah, what the hell,
might as well try this Bulgarian stuff first and then we'll see.

Fishing With Explosives

   They are after the salmon, the lads. I know, because I heard them talking behind the barn yesterday - Padraig, Diarmuid and Kevin from across the way.  This morning Padraig hurried through his chores, leaving me to tidy up on my own.  Not that I mind; in other farms the girl has to do the lot herself with nobody helping.  Padraig brings in the cows and feeds the calves, sometimes even does the milking with me, now that Margaret is no good anymore.  She and I used to milk together, before she was taken ill, that is. Now she needs more minding than the cattle, always getting in the way and hurting herself.

   Padraig comes back at lunchtime, saying they'll have to go for it this evening, on the way to the dance, so nobody will know they are up to something.    “Up to what?” I ask.

   “Fishin'”, says he, “you'll have to come too and help, and you’ll see a rare sight.  Besides, Diarmuid likes you to be there, he's sweet on you, you know?”

   Diarmuid likes me watch him fish all right, fancies himself, so he does, standing with his pitchfork on the stepping stones, waiting for the fish to come through.  He is good and fast, I grant him that - catches more than the other lads, but I don't care to see the fish speared, wriggling at the end of the fork, blood running into the water.  “We have a better way”, says Padraig, “we'll catch two dozen in one go.”

   “How?” says I, “nobody can do that.”

   “Explosives”, he whispers. 

   I get a fright.  “Mother and Father won't like it, where did you get it from?”

   “One of the lads from the Galley lighthouse nicked it from their supply”, says he, “Kevin knows somebody who is friendly with him.”

   “It's too noisy, everybody 'round will hear”, says I, “and that's all we need, the police snooping 'round the outhouses, now that the last batch is nearly done and ready for sale!”

   “Ach, no, there won't be hardly any noise. We'll go when its gettin' dark, nobody is gonna see or hear anything.”

   “What about old Mrs. Murray?  She'll see us walkin' by and hear what's going on by the river?”

   “She won't hear a thing - she is near deaf anyhow, and we say we are going to the dance.  There is a fellow with a truck comin' to Kevin's in the morning, he is taking the fish off us - half a shilling each and you'll get your share of that.”

   I don't like it one bit, but I agree to go with them, if only because I don't want to miss the dance.  So we leave after the milking, I throw a shawl around myself and we set off for the river.  Padraig is carrying one sack, Kevin bringing another, and Diarmuid the pitchfork.  He says nothing about the explosives.  Mrs. Murray's door is closed when we go by the cottage, but I can smell the smoke from her turf fire. It's colder down here in the valley; at this time of the year, there is always some mist of an evening. The whitethorn is flowering and the smell of honeysuckle is sweet in the air. A corncrake calls early in the meadow across the river, but there's no time to dawdle.

   The lads are waiting by the stepping-stones.  “Ye're late!” says Kevin, “we have to be quick.”

   Diarmuid holds something in his hands, a bundle wrapped in a dark cloth. We wait at the side of the river as he walks out over the stones. He strikes a match and holds it to the bundle, throwing the lot into the middle of the pool.

   There's a splash, and then for a while nothing happens.  I think maybe it don't work, but then I hear a bang, not loud, just a muffled 'woomph', and a patch of water froths in the pool, like as if a seal had dived under.

   Then everything is silent again and we wait for the fish to appear, which they do slowly, rising up one by one, and it takes a long time for all of them to come to the surface, almost two dozen in all!

   It is quite dark by now, the sun has set half an hour ago, but there is a big moon low in the sky and we can see well enough. The fish are floating, belly up, glittering like silver in the moonlight.

   “A few on the edge of the pool aren't dead, only stunned”, says Padraig, “so we have to get them out first before they recover.”  I hold the sacks open and the lads take turns taking the fish in with the pitchfork.

   They are heavy when we are done, and the stepping-stones slippery, so when we cross the river, I almost slip and fall in. Kevin and Padraig are carrying one sack between them, and Diarmuid and I the other. It's a steep walk up to Kevin's where we leave them behind some bales of hay in the barn. I'm all but done in by the time we get there, my skirt is soaked and I am covered in scales like a fishwife. We clean ourselves as best we can and set out for the village. The lads are in high spirit, singing and bragging all the way about what they're gonna do with the money. Diarmuid throws me looks. I dare say he's mighty proud of himself.  But he needn't look at me like that - he won't catch me as easy.

The Tantric Gymnast

We met up after the last lectures were over and decided to go to my place, since it was nearest to the campus. Susan was my oldest friend ever since we had first met in art class during primary school. She was now studying art and design and I philosophy and English literature. I had met Miriam only recently during a seminar on the Romantic poets. She was shy and quiet and hadn't quite settled into the city yet.

Thinking we might be cooking something later, we bought some food on the way - pasta, mince and tomato sauce, our staple diet these days, apart from pizza.

   I was living with three other students in a rather ramshackle place with a wild garden out the back, full of briars and a few spare blades of grass that nobody ever bothered to mow. Inside, the house wasn't much better. The lino in the hall had bits missing, where the concrete floor showed through, and there were huge cracks in the plaster on the walls. Going upstairs you had to be careful not to put too much weight on the banister, as the wood was so rotten in places that the whole lot was in danger of coming down. But I loved it, if only for the fact that it was my first place to live after moving away from home.

   Opening the front door, the house seemed so quiet that I thought nobody was at home. But Miriam, who was going to bring the bag of food into the kitchen suddenly gave a yelp: "Oh - I.." Looking over her shoulder I gasped at a most astonishing sight: There was Michael in the middle of the kitchen, standing on his head, stark naked.

   "Michael, for God's sake!" I yelled at him, "what the hell are you doing there?" There was no reaction from him, not even the flutter of an eyelid. It was as if he hadn't heard me at all. I quickly took the food from Miriam and pushed her and Susan into my room on the other side of the hall.

   "Stay there, I'll get us a cup of tea."

   I knew it was no good talking to him until he came out of his trance, so I carefully made my way around him to the fridge. Our kitchen was so small and cramped that it was difficult to get by without knocking him over. On the other hand I had to resist the strong urge of giving him a good kick, which would have sent him down with a satisfying crash but might have inflicted too much injury on him.

Feeling somewhat distracted, I hurriedly made the tea and went over to my room. Susan was grinning at me, but the shock still showed in Miriam's face. She'd had a very strict Catholic upbringing and looked as she had never seen a naked man in her life before, certainly not an upside-down one.

   "He looks good", Susan said, "his body, I mean - he's well built."

   "Don't tell him that. He might get ideas and want to share it with you." Having lived with Michael for the past six months, I had got to know him pretty well. The only subjects that brought him back down to earth - and that with a bang - were food and sex. I'd had a hard time at the beginning, keeping him out of my hair and bed.

   "No thanks," Susan had met him a few times before when he was fully dressed and in possession of as many of his senses as he was able to muster.

   "But I might ask him if he would pose for me."

   "I'm sure he'll oblige only too gladly. He is certainly able to stand still for any length of time."

   Miriam looked in bewilderment at us as well as at the mess in my room. My bed was just a mattress on the floor, and because I had no wardrobe, my clothes were piled in a big heap beside it. I had bookshelves hanging on the walls that I had made myself out of boards strung up on thick rope. They were always sagging, and knocking against them could cause an avalanche of books tumbling down. She was nervous about leaving the room and risk running into Michael again.

   "Don't worry, he can't keep it up for longer than half an hour. I'll see whether he is gone."

   When I opened the door, Michael had left the kitchen. I looked around to make sure he wasn't lurking somewhere else in another statue-like pose, but I couldn't see him anywhere. To my relief, the sound of quiet music and the smell of incense were wafting down the stairs, which meant that he would be busy meditating for a while.

   But we had barely started cooking when the telltale smell and noise brought him down again. At least, he was dressed now in his favourite clothes of dark red, soft flowing material.

   "Hi girls, what are you cooking?"

   "Spaghetti Bolognese", I replied.

   "Is there meat in it?" He must have spotted the packet of mince on the sink. "I am a vegetarian. I don't eat meat," he said, unnecessarily, to Susan and Miriam.

   "Of course. Without the meat it would just be spaghetti. You can have some of that if you want." I wasn't feeling very charitable towards him. "What do you think you were doing there, taking over the whole kitchen, starkers, with your exercises?"

   "They are not exercises! They are yoga postures and it is better do them without clothes. The energy needs to circulate freely around the body - clothes hinder the flow."

   "But in the kitchen of all places! Why don't you do it in your room?"
  

 "The vibes are better here; in my room it feels kind of dull."

   "Yeah - no spell-bound audience, that's for sure."

   He shot me a look of defiant holiness. "Where is everybody else," he asked.

   "Carol is spending the weekend with her parents and Ian is with his new girlfriend, what's her name again?"

   "Don't know." His expression glazed over for a moment and I thought I knew what he was thinking. His relationships with women never lasted for very long and he hadn't been seeing anybody for a while. Girls quickly got fed up with his combination of neediness and self-improvement.

   He was looking wistfully at Miriam, who was cutting up tomatoes.

   "Don't you dare," I blurted out, still feeling annoyed. But Miriam looked up and smiled back at him sweetly. Apparently, now that he was dressed she didn't find him so alarming anymore.

   "Why do you do that anyway, standing on your head for so long," she asked. I groaned inwardly - we would be in for it now for the rest of the evening.

   "I'm an adept of Tantra Yoga and the postures help to free the cosmic energy that lies coiled up at the base of the spine. It rises up through the chakras and meets with the cosmic consciousness above the crown of the head." He was indicating the path the energy would take.

   Susan was trying hard not to burst out laughing: "Weren't you the wrong way around for that - for this energy to rise up, I mean, what would happen if?"

   Michael glared at her, but ignoring her otherwise, turned back to Miriam. "Anyway, what I was going to say, the entire universe is pure consciousness but in manifesting itself it divides into poles: the masculine which is static, unmanifested consciousness and is called Shiva, and feminine which is dynamic and creative and is called Shakti. Every human being is a miniature universe where the same principle applies. So we work towards resolving the duality into unity again, by awakening the Kundalini to unite with Shiva. While we are still living in the body, this liberation from duality into unity is the highest achieve -"

   "Yeah, right, we get the picture," I interrupted, "do you want some spaghetti now or not?"

   "No thanks, I'll just have a cup of tea and a biscuit. I might cook something later." He was in a bit of a huff now and I felt almost sorry for him. To make up for my lack of appreciation for the finer details of cosmic living I put on the kettle and handed him the biscuits. He ignored Susan and myself, gave Miriam a conspiratorial half-smile and left the kitchen.

   "How on earth can you stand living with him?" Susan asked when he was gone.

   "He is alright. At least he is quiet and he doesn't smoke."

   "I thought it was rather interesting, what he was talking about," Miriam said.

   "Don't let him fool you," Susan replied, "It is only glorified gymnastics he is doing. He knows no more about Tantra than a potbellied pig."

   Miriam wasn't to be put off that easily. For the rest of the evening she was even quieter than usual and didn't take much interest in our discussion on art as a much more practical philosophy of life.

   When she and Susan were leaving I saw her throwing a quick glance towards Michael's room upstairs. I had my doubts that he would ever make much headway towards the awakening of cosmic energy but it looked likely that he had achieved something much more tangible this evening.

Forever In No Time At all

A Short Discourse on the Logic of Woman

A well known male writer remarked recently: “…that there are probably obscure aspects of Superstring Theory that would be easier for a man to understand than woman’s logic ever could be - a piece of piss by comparison.”

We quite agree. Since nearly all concepts and theories, Superstring being no exception, are based on the logic of man this hardly comes as a surprise but we are impressed by the succinct clarity with which he has drawn attention to the difficulty. We propose to shed some light on the problem ourselves, illustrating our point by one aspect of the Superstring Theory, namely the assumed existence of other dimensions besides the familiar four of space and time. We are aware of the fact that this will make our exposition rather cumbersome but also, we hope, more accessible to the non-female mind. It should then become clear why, when faced with woman’s logic, man is at such a severe disadvantage.

As it is a much simpler matter we will first say a few words concerning the logic of man.

Throughout history man has endeavoured with ever increasing urgency to reduce an infinitely complex and vibrant universe to only four dimensions that are comparatively easy to control and maintain. Everything that proved to be too unpredictable, in that it avoided the grasp manageability has been discarded into an unknown realm of “otherness”. Only occasionally has man caught fleeting glimpses of what he is missing. In western traditional thought these aspects subsequently got bundled up into the concept of God but more recently the role has been taken over by science. There is, however, ample evidence to suggest that no matter how one tries to understand and label the missing parts they will elude one’s perception as long as they are thought about from a mindset based on just four dearly cherished but separate dimensions. Not only is it impossible to contact the discarded realms from there, they can’t even been proven to exist. Finding oneself thus locked out and cut off from a large chunk of human existence is bound to be an alarming and destabilising experience. It is therefore not surprising that it imparts on men a somewhat distorted view of reality and that all thoughts and actions which are based on access to the full range of human existence would seem confusing, illogical or even threatening.

Which leads us on to the greater depth and complexity of woman’s logic.

These split off dimensions that present such difficulties to the minds of men have always been familiar territory for women, although for good reason, they never drew much attention to it. They have held in balance what men have tried hard to subjugate, or, where that has not been possible, to invent ever more sophisticated means to destroy. A woman knows that the secrets of the universe don’t yield to the grasping, inquisitive mind but to a presence that resonates with its laws in an attitude of awe and humility. Throughout millennia of ridicule, disparagement and outright persecution women have kept alive knowledge concerning the deep mysteries of life and equally of death. But a predominantly hostile attitude towards this kind of wisdom forced woman’s logic to operate from an underground grass root level. So far that has been just about sustainable enough to prevent the planet from being pitched into the premature barrenness that is incipient in the logic of man and at the same time it afforded a low enough noticibility to not endanger its own existence as an indispensable part of the whole.

Consequently, women know how to discern the pea brain as well as the p-brane and how to deal with them in their respective dimension, supporting the existence of all. But we feel it is imperative now that like the author quoted at the beginning more men will rise to the challenge and enquire into woman’s more integrative approach to the universe. It would then be a simple matter to reinstate the discarded dimensions, which would put the four that for so long have dominated our lives in a much healthier perspective. Since the now prevalent form of logic is in danger of effecting the complete and everlasting destruction of the planet in no time at all, we believe that this task is an urgent one.

Bleary-Eyed and Famous

I had a few minutes to spare and went into the small second hand bookshop beside the shopping centre. I rather like it in there; it is old fashioned and dusty and so chaotic that you are lucky to find anything you are looking for. The person who runs it obviously loves his books - like in a well-run animal rescue centre nothing is ever put down. I recognise some of the books that are piled on the shelves and on stacks on the floor from when I started to come here first twenty years ago, and although I would never buy them, by now they feel almost like old friends.

   I had come in the hope that I might find a P.G. Wodehouse novel that was new to me. Although, with so many of his books featuring the same stolen cow-creamer and various speech days at Market Snodsbury Grammar School it often takes me three quarters way through the book before I find out whether I have read it or not. But the sheer brilliancy of his prose is so dazzling that I put up with the hardship of a repetitive plot.

   As I was browsing through the tattered paperbacks I suddenly came across a copy of my own novel that I had written when I was still at university. It was quite a shock - I hadn't seen one around in years and at times even forgot that I ever wrote it. I looked around to make sure nobody was watching before I took it out from the shelf. It wasn't very likely that anybody would recognise me after all these years but still I felt rather self -conscious. It was like coming face to face with your reflection in a mirror in an unexpected place, when you suddenly realise that you look very different from what you always thought. At least you want to make sure you are on your own.

   I had called it "Looking Into the Past", a title that sounded pompous to me now but of which I had been quite proud at the time. It is a semi-autobiographical account of my childhood and adolescent years, and when I wrote it in my early twenties I thought I had a world of experience behind me and knew which way life ought to be going. That it became such a huge success had surprised nobody more than myself. It immediately won a major award, and for a while my life had been a whirl of book signing tours around the country, meals in high-class restaurants with editors and other literary people and interviews for radio and newspapers. I once even took part in a television show with Iris Murdock. I was way out of my depth of course, but although she was frightfully intellectual she had been quite nice.

   It had been an exciting and exhausting time. But when all the publicity had died down I felt so empty and washed out that there didn't seem enough left of myself to write about anything else. And then I got married, had children and that was it.

   At times I was feeling guilty for not having written another book, especially when somebody wanted to know what I was doing next. Every published book seemed to be regarded as a solemn promise that the author would keep writing as long as he was still alive, and I felt I had let people down. But who is to say that if you write one book you have to write more? Anyway, that had all been in the distant past; hardly anybody mentioned the book to me now.

   I opened it at random and read the incident when my younger brother had fallen into the swimming pool in the middle of winter. Of course we hadn’t been allowed to go near it but during a very cold spell in the days before, a thick layer of ice had been forming on the water that had just started to break up again. We were pushing the sheet of ice to and fro between us with long sticks from opposite ends of the pool when my brother overbalanced and fell in, getting caught between the ice and the side. He could barely swim at the time and I wasn't old enough to jump in after him. All I could think of was to shout plenty of encouragement at him to swim for all he was worth, and he finally managed to reach the ladder. I don't know why I told him then to wait there while I was getting our mother. I suppose my intention had been to protect him from her wrath at our disobedience and to calm her down a bit before she had to face her shivery and half drowned son. It didn't occur to me that he might catch pneumonia standing there in the cold, soaked to the skin. In the end though it had turned out alright, much to our relief; I only got a light telling off for having left him at the pool instead of bringing him home, and he didn't even catch a cold.

   I closed the book thinking I would like to buy it, having somehow lost or given away all my own copies. But I felt as conspicuous as if I was about to steal it. Although there was nobody else in the shop and the person behind the counter didn't seem particularly observant, being lost in a book himself, I still didn't want to risk being recognised and having to answer awkward questions about my years of silence.

   I put it back into its place and left the shop without buying anything but as I did so I wondered whether I had, in the years since writing that first book, accumulated enough of a past to write another.

The Dark Mirror

It is almost fifteen years now since we bought this old run-down Georgian country house in a leafy and isolated part of the country. It had been built by an architect and been in the same family for almost two hundred years. But recently the last of his descendents had died and the heirs, having no interest in it, had sold it to us at a reasonable price. It was really too big for just the two of us, with five bedrooms upstairs, two living rooms and a dining room that would do for a medium size restaurant, but we had fallen in love with its well-proportioned symmetry and its setting among five acres of garden with mature trees and some rare shrubs.

    There were a few beautiful pieces of furniture left inside that nobody had thought fit to remove because they were either too large or too heavy or in a bad state of repair.  In one of the living rooms we found a Louis XV chaise longue that hadn’t been too badly affected by woodworm, so we had it treated and upholstered and it became our favourite place for reading in front of the fire. Upstairs an ancient writing desk had been left that had gone so dark with age that it was almost black. It had numerous drawers on top and both sides, and I immediately claimed it for myself.  Being a real hoarder of things and never able to throw anything out it provided plenty of room for my accumulated treasures (or rubbish as my husband would have it).  It even had a secret drawer, but to this day we haven’t yet managed to find the mechanism that would open it.

     And then there was the mirror, a large and extraordinary looking thing that despite its strangeness was quite beautiful in its own way. Its surface was dark brown in colour with a bluish-violet tinge, reminding me of a polished gemstone like opal. It had a mysterious depth of its own and at the same time you could see yourself reflected in it, although this reflection would be somewhat blurred and distorted. It was obviously very old with dark blotches and cracked flaws in the glass that otherwise shone with a luminous iridescence. The wooden frame had intricately carved patterns of flower heads, leaves and swirls that had collected a thick layer of grime and dust over the years.

    My husband doesn’t like useless clutter in the house and wanted to throw it out straight away. But I rather liked it and the sense of enchantment that was emanating from it. So we only moved it from its more prominent position in the sitting room to an obscure corner in the back hall.

    At first I didn’t pay much attention to it there; we were busy renovating the house and settling into the neighbourhood. But after a while, when we started to feel at home I often felt drawn into the corner where the mirror was. I couldn’t even see much there with the darkness of the glass and the lack of light in the hall but it was as if a mysterious and subtle power hovered around the mirror that was not only noticeable standing close to it but could be felt throughout the whole house.

    I found myself spending more and more time in front of the mirror and gradually I began to notice that the reflection it was giving back always had slight differences that would increase the longer I looked. At first it was so subtle that I thought I must have been mistaken but as I grew more familiar with the peculiar colouring of the glass I began to make out the variations. The image I saw was definitely mine and yet I hardly recognised myself. For instance I would see myself not with the short hair I have in real life but with hair all done up in ringlets and falling down to my shoulders. I might be wearing a long dress, trimmed with lace and bound tightly right under the breasts. At other times I saw myself dressed in a black gown of stiff material and with a wide skirt.

    But the strangest thing was that the way I felt about myself began to change the longer I looked. I would forget whatever job I had meant to do and find myself wandering through the house instead, looking for something that I couldn’t quite make out. At the same time I was unable to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. I might be standing in the kitchen looking at something like the coffeemaker and for a while not knowing what it was. A couple of times I opened the fridge and was so startled by the light and the cold that I banged the door shut, forgetting why I had opened it. When I went into one of the bedrooms I often sat down on a chair by the window and looked out into the garden for an hour or two, without the slightest need to move or do anything but dreamily pass the time. At other times a deep sadness came over me, as if I had lost somebody or something precious.

    Although I have to admit that occasionally I was a bit frightened, on the whole I enjoyed these sensations of gentle dislocation. I generally felt peaceful and relaxed when I came to myself again and able to get on with whatever I needed to do. They gave me a special relationship with the house as if I was able to feel its whole history in the very pulse of my body.

My husband however was nervous of the mirror and the effect it had on me. It alarmed him that when I was going into one of those slight trances I didn’t feel like talking very much. He couldn’t see anything in it but the blurred outline of himself and thought the whole experience didn’t do me any good. We started to have major arguments about it but no matter how often I told him that there was nothing dangerous about the mirror, he didn’t want to have it in the house anymore.

     In the end he became so adamant to get rid of it that I gave in. One day he announced that he would bring it to an antique dealer. I followed him when he carried it to the car and was shocked at the transformation of the mirror as soon as it left the house. It immediately lost its sheen and looked like any old mirror that had clouded over with age. There was such a palpable sense of anguish in the air that I sat down on the front steps and cried.

     I miss it now as I miss the intimate glimpses and sensations it had given me of the house, and although I still enjoy living here, I know that with the mirror the soul of the house has gone too. Again I find myself wandering around but without the feeling of peacefulness, and this time I know that whatever I am looking for can’t be found anymore.

Each of the above pieces are © Silke O'Reilly 2007