Out-and-Out liars; Epilogue

On August the 7^th, 2014 a portrait of a celeb crested macaque appeared in in-boxes, instagrams and newspapers around the globe. It depicted a primate grinning blissfully into the camera. The photograph was taken in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.  Though the articles named the simian as Naruto’ the operator of the digital camera was none other than Floy; it was his first ‘selfie’.

Oblivious of the media storm raging around copyright ownership of the now-famous self-portrait, Floy aka Naruto could not possibly grasp the implications of the negative effects £10,000 loss of earnings would mean for the camera’s owner  Nature Photographer, David J Slater following Wikimedia’s publication of the image in the public domain, free of charge, due to nonhuman intervention; purloined momentarily by the playful monkey this momentary lapse of attention which would come to signifying for the camera’s owner not only the loss of all creative rights of the image, but a lawsuit filed by PETA, would seek to establish, as Floy’s ‘Friend’ or representative in absentia, that the curious male crested black macaque was indeed sole ‘author’ and owner of the image.

Floy could not know, of course that Wikimedia Common, the US-based organisation behind Wikileaks, would have a hand in propelling his image, gratis, into the public domain making him more famous than he had already become before his escape from a flat in Paddington, London, following his emergence from a tea-cup, saucer and spoon purchased in Harvey Nichols by an African woman who had sought to save her own face in a manner entirely different from Floy’s pixelated attempts.

On September 22^nd, 2015 PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) waded into the argument on the matter of creative ownership of the famous image by issuing a statement of intention to file a lawsuit against David J Slater and his, company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., to gain sole copyright for the crested macaque in Sulawesi and seek to rule that Mr Slater and Wikimedia should administer the proceeds of the “monkey selfie” sales for the benefit of Floy (aka Naruto) and his community, without compensation to PETA.

Those representing Floy would prove that creative control had been taken out of Mr Slater’s hands, literally, as it was clearly evident, from the quality and general composition of the photo that the line separating simians from humans was indeed extremely thin to thread-bare. Having the requisite digits- fingers and a thumb, to grasp the apparatus, especially an index finger to operate the shutter-the evolutionary leap necessary to operate the light-setting, flash and tone would be proven negligible in a court of law.  While composition and quality would be presented;” Exhibit  A!, The Photograph Your Honour”. The fact that Floy is depicted flagrantly posing, sporting a wide toothy grin, would constitute “Exhibit B! Again, the Photograph Your Honour,’ and represent a degree of self-awareness in the celeb crested macaque, if somewhat inane, “Exhibit C “Your Honour, the phot...” for the final summing up the photo would be held up for comparison against other ‘selfies’ of primates in the world of celebs. “Exhibits D to Z! Your Honour!” to illustrate that cheesy grins were not only the preserve of the nonhuman.

In London, once Floy had freed himself from the tea-cup after the arrest of the African woman, her husband and his best friend (her lover), following a violent skirmish; Floy found that the effort of emerging fully formed from the piece of crockery had left him deplete of energy. Debilitated, he was also intuitively certain, knowing the thinly-veiled knee-jerk racial prejudice of the British Police Force, that the trio of Africans were not likely to be allowed to return home from the police station to pick up a few belongings before deportation. Floy stretched out on the sofa to recuperate. There was not much reading matter in the flat except a pile of magazines stacked in a corner of the florid living room.

Among the vivid pages of Nature Magazine Floy learned all that he did not need to learn about what type of images got the editorial and aesthetic thumbs-up; the articles offered the means, after trial and error, to attain something approaching the perfect self-portrait, one worthy of publication.

The autodidactic photography course was subsumed by a familiar sound, the Javanese gamelan was being played somewhere in the neighbourhood; homesickness sank in and stuck. Floy pondered long and hard how he might return to his beloved jungle. After weeks he found he was thinking a little too hard as he seemed to have, not so much as a brain-wave but, a series of embolisms. Jumping up from the sofa he rooted through draws and cupboards. A large box, tins of Pilchards, a black marker, masking tape and five A4 books of first class stamps lay out before him. He pasted the stamps onto the box, placed the tins of Pilchards inside along with a few cushions and a tin-opener, he wrote, ‘Gamelan Set’ in large letters on the side and, in the available space between the pages of stamps addressed it to:  Harry Hilser. Selamatkan Yaki. North Sulawesi. Indonesia. Under cover of night, Floy dragged the box the few yards to a red pillar box, climbed in and, using the masking tape, sealed it up from inside, and waited for the postman.

Harry Hilser, (who renamed Floy, incidently) Manager and Celeb Crested Macaque Conservationist at the Sulwesi Reserve knew instantly, the moment Floy leapt from the box reeking of pilchards, that here was a Macaque with an above average IQ. “The first thing he did when he sprung from the box was shake my hand”, said a proud Mr Hilser. When asked later about Floy obtaining copyright of his own image, the conservationist replied, “Why not, we could do with the money. Having a fixed media image of a tribe or species invariably leads to its extinction; within the last 40 years around 80% of our own personalities have been in serious decline since the invention of television and the internet. Ownership of our own personalities might be evidence, during our own life-times, of our actual existence!”

Joyful, rejuvenated, Floy was back among the less socially anorexic embrace of his own kind when he stumbled upon a camera mounted on a tripod. He knew exactly what to do. He located the shutter, turned the lens towards his friends and snapped away blissfully unaware of the bitter acrimony that his seeming mischievous play would cause on the other side of the world.  Adjusting the settings he then turned the camera on himself.  Floy was no mere monkey signifying at the crossroad of humanity  but an out-and-out liar supremo class for it is clear in Floy’s golden gaze that he knew he’d taken, that instant his finger squeezed down on the shutter, the money shot. 

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2. Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters. Chapter 2, Part 14.

                                                                              14.

Red blood runs from the fur of the white-eared bear, the white-bearded bear is as white as the snow is white. A circular blade implodes into its chest, cold.  Down on all fours across the rage-filled snow, now up on hind legs, rampant to catch the acrid scent of the human shaking its babies, lifeless dark shapes somersaulting against a sky, killer-whales at play with seals in a death-swoon... Ropes, dragged across a blood track, dogs licking at the trail, movement without movement, away from the  burrow, the smell of its kin increasing, the rank  intruder fading, the strange sound of distant skating over a glass-ceiling beneath which a polar bear treads water awhile amid blue mountains then turns towards home. Red blood runs from the fur of the white-eared bear, the white-bearded bear is white as the snow is white.

Chovihani opened his eyes, the tundra reflected in his tears; he had used his gift to ‘see’ the animal’s final moments, the polar bear, a mother whose pelt had upholtsred the giants sledge, the sledge from which he had been ejected, his beloved Mary Mary sailing off oblivious of his fate...or her own. Before the bindings of the sledge were unloosened, Chovihani had remote ‘read’ the  giant and had ‘seen’ things only ‘seen’ on pottery bought from the plantations of the Caribbean...that Mary Mary would add to his collection of  Mrs Rochesters was a  metaphor wasted on Chovihani. ‘”Seeing, as you do” he remembered his grandmother saying, “can also involve becoming...It must be matter of  life or death;  there is no way back, unless you retain a piece of what you were before...as the key”. The white fur wrapped around him, seeing with not only his hands, sight spread down his arms, his chest, stomach and belly, up to his crown, down to the soles of his feet through all the meridians; guy ropes harpooning across to relevant staging points of transformation;  he was trawled in. The pain in his ankle vanished.

When Mary Mary celebrity drag chanteuse was strong-armed through the entrance of the giant’s cave Mitzy sprang directly from the floor into her arms and held fast lovingly while setting up a tooth-baring low growl in the direction of the serial killer who was their host; how was Mitzy going convey to her ditzy owner that the crowning glory of her performing career would be the lead role in a Snuff Movie?

In their absence Mitzy had allowed more light into the grim mausoleum that was the giant’s frozen larder, this had the effect  of not only revealing a gallery of cryogenically preserved, if somewhat chilblained celebs, but of triggering the slow-drip process of a general thaw;  it was the sound of Graceful Perrier, American-born British Gay Forces sweetheart Army Lama and cross-dressing art critic Janet Street-Gorgon crashing through the partition in a grisly reveal, that prompted Mary Mary to declare.
Red blood runs from the fur of the white-eared bear, the white-bearded bear is as white as the snow is white. A circular blade implodes into its chest, cold.  Down on all fours across the rage-filled snow, now up on hind legs, rampant to catch the acrid scent of the human shaking its babies, lifeless dark shapes somersaulting against a sky, killer-whales at play with seals in a death-swoon... Ropes, dragged across a blood track, dogs licking at the trail, movement without movement, away from the  burrow, the smell of its kin increasing, the rank  intruder fading, the strange sound of distant skating over a glass-ceiling beneath which a polar bear treads water awhile amid blue mountains then turns towards home. Red blood runs from the fur of the white-eared bear, the white-bearded bear is white as the snow is white.


Chovihani opened his eyes, the tundra reflected in his tears; he had used his gift to ‘see’ the animal’s final moments, the polar bear, a mother whose pelt had upholtsred the giants sledge, the sledge from which he had been ejected, his beloved Mary Mary sailing off oblivious of his fate...or her own. Before the bindings of the sledge were unloosened, Chovihani had remote ‘read’ the  giant and had ‘seen’ things only ‘seen’ on pottery bought from the plantations of the Caribbean...that Mary Mary would add to his collection of  Mrs Rochesters was a  metaphor wasted on Chovihani. ‘”Seeing, as you do” he remembered his grandmother saying, “can also involve becoming...It must be matter of  life or death;  there is no way back, unless you retain a piece of what you were before...as the key”. The white fur wrapped around him, seeing with not only his hands, sight spread down his arms, his chest, stomach and belly, up to his crown, down to the soles of his feet through all the meridians; guy ropes harpooning across to relevant staging points of transformation;  he was trawled in. The pain in his ankle vanished.


When Mary Mary celebrity drag chanteuse was strong-armed through the entrance of the giant’s cave Mitzy sprang directly from the floor into her arms and held fast lovingly while setting up a tooth-baring low growl in the direction of the serial killer who was their host; how was Mitzy going convey to her ditzy owner that the crowning glory of her performing career would be the lead role in a Snuff Movie?

In their absence Mitzy had allowed more light into the grim mausoleum that was the giant’s frozen larder, this had the effect  of not only revealing a gallery of cryogenically preserved, if somewhat chilblained celebs, but of triggering the slow-drip process of a general thaw;  it was the sound of Graceful Perrier, American-born British Gay Forces sweetheart Army Lama and cross-dressing art critic Janet Street-Gorgon crashing through the partition in a grisly reveal, that prompted Mary Mary

“If you don’t mind, we would quite like to go now”.

Just as the giant was bearing down on her intent on cracking her skull between the two anvils that were his hands a roar followed by a snorting was heard coming from outside of the cave. The giant went out to explore, Mary Mary close behind.

Surrounding the giant lair over twenty polar bears stood o hind legs in a semi-circle and in centre a huge female, the like of which the giant recognized but dismissed as being the same as one recently hunted and killed. The lead bear had shown the other bears exactly what must be done. Like a boer with a bad head the giant came raging out, his former brutalities an apparent cloak of invincibility, Chovihani-transformed had guided the bears and wolves to the harpoon stores before visually transferring the human’s ability to hunt Artic bears and wolves to those inhabitants gathered. Years later Mary Mary would be so traumatized by the actual reality of what happened that day out there on the Arctic tundra that the event was forever confused in her mind with a Tennessee Williams play set on a South African plantation in which the main protagonist, an overbearing supremacist, Eugenie Tiara-Blanche was torn apart and eaten by the local young men of Cabeza de Lobo...or was it Morrocco...

The lead bear had approached a petrified Mary Mary, and rising up on hind legs gently swiped her fur coat from her shoulders to be picked up and solemnly, along with the furs in the cave, carried away. Mary Mary did not have to wonder far before a BBC reporter, the remotest correspondent in the world, passed overhead in a light aircraft. Frontrunner Simpson as he usually signed off on his rare reportage, could not believe the concentration of scoops falling into his lap, what with the sinking of The HMS England and HMS Weatherspoon, the triumphs the of the Sea Shepeard over the blood-thirsty Faroe Islanders, and the disappearance and reappearance of the Blarney Stone at the centre of the North Pole, and now this unmistakable sighting. ( He reported unashamedly of having chased Mary Mary up and down the tundra at close range for some time). The reports of Mary Mary heretofore considered dead now ensured that Mary Mary and her pet would soon take the mudslide down and emerge out of every sewer in the dead centre of every living room a bigger celebrity than when she had left, the timing could not have been better, as she stepped neatly into the shoes of the missing celebrity cruise ship singer Jane Macdonald

Breaking News: Chovihani has found a mate and has given birth to two new cubs.

                                                       THE END

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2, Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2, Part 13

                                                                             13.

In 2003 the UK viewing public watched as John Simpson, a middle-aged British journalist and foreign correspondent with the BBC, single-handedly led the invasion of Iraq. That the spectators of the incessant rolling and breaking news had become inured to the actual plight of a besieged and war-torn populace and become more concerned with the plight of this pre-colonial relic holding the nation’s hand through his own Boy’s Own Adventure featuring dusky understudies and extras directed and stage managed to reflect glory on the journalist himself, was clear only to someone who had switched on the TV for the first time after five years living on a Buddhist retreat and no one else.

Once again the natives were dragooned into following the latter-day TE Lawrence spearheading the taking of Bagdad by a gap of several hundred metres, the camera inviting the viewer to interpret the triumph of the Iraqi people on the jubilant, if somewhat conflicted features of the journalist himself; soft-power had crossed an imperceptible line into the territory of bad taste.

Mr Simpson, now the BBC’s world affairs editor has set the gold-standard for future war journalism in grim aspic; (the paparazzi in pursuit of a mushroom cloud may well be humanity's ultimate money shot), and those younger pretenders who seek to stoke the kindling of unrest into the flash-bulb of nuclear war for good editorial are daily confronted by locals who themselves, have learned to stage-manage camera-friendly harrowing vignettes for the benefit of anyone brandishing the BBC logo wherever they may choose to appear as headline.

The media, a voracious beast that needs constantly to be fed, was now feeding on itself; western journalists kidnapped, shot, missing, under mortar attack, in mine-fields, instigating, negotiating and mediating- were now subjects of breaking and rolling news, unabashedly marching among the ranks of  advancing armies; a micro-step out front of the generals themselves and in the case of Mr Simpson, streets ahead; the appetite of journalistic brinkmanship had relegated world events to a mere a side-salad.

Today, there is no end of psychopathic dictators ready for their close-up, but even these troubled individuals are elbowed out of the way in the stampede for journalistic glory, to the increasing annoyance of...well, psychopathic dictators. Endlessly watching play-back footage as they are also wont to do, tyrants across the globe sit in baffled frustration counting   camera time incrementally stolen by interviewers clearly more megalomaniacal than themselves.

The low point in British journalism came when a foreign correspondent spread the rumour that he himself had gone missing! Rapidly taken up by media outlets around the globe, speculation as to the whereabouts of their possibly martyred colleague raged to the accompaniment of blame levelled at any number of imagined kidnappers. Visibly irked by the general up-staging, getting-in-the-way and the consequential outcome of relegating world leaders to B-list celebrity status, Vladimir Putin was widely posited as principal instigator of the journalist’s disappearance. Limelight, everyone knew, was hard-won so hard won in fact that orchestrating one’s own disappearance in the name of a scoop was even referenced in several annals on journalism as an entirely commendable practice, worthy indeed of high praise if it could only be pulled off. Better still, a new world record nadir was broken; behind the camera and then brazenly in front of it, the missing journalist began reporting on and engaging in the search for himself!

That it distracted attention away from the war-traumatized displaced multi-coloured multitudes to a single prismatic beam of white light thinly disguised soft-power within a hierarchy of life..and death. The eventual mock-dischevelled return of the Prodigal Son triggered the familiar media charivari that ensures heroic status although, from the living room couch, the Mrs Fishers of this world would always say,  “Well, nobody bloody asked him to go out there, did they”.

Out-and-Out Liars. part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2, Part 12

                                                                          12.

Mitzy was no Brian Sewell, thankfully; art critic though she was not, she could recognize the transvestite Turner Prize-winning potter Graceful Perrier anywhere. Mitzy had even caught her owner’s infectious enthusiasm for the artist-in-ceramics, having been allowed forbidden peeks over the parapet of Mary Mary’s handbag at various exhibitions, the artist himself depicted and peering back in varying poses upon the glazed earthenware. The potter from Potters Barn was now immortalised in the ceiling of the giant’s grotto. In the semi dark and thin, cold air of the cave Mitzy stared up at a life size image in a lemon frock with strawberry motifs, a trademark shoulder-length blond Mary Quant/Aunt Sally wig framing a pale face in stark contrast to the vivid rouged cheeks.

The giant rose momentarily in Mitzi’s esteem at the thought of Graceful Perrier having once graced the dwelling of their gargantuan host and left evidence of her visit daubed on the walls of the giant’s giant larder. In the half-lit natural freezer Mitzi trotted forward for a closer look at Graceful Perrier's cave painting of...well, Graceful Perrier.

Mitzti noticed that the circle of rouge on the left side of the artist’s cheek was less blush-of-gushing-youth than.... Mitzi had seen this marking before. Pulling one of the fur drapes that acted as both insulation and partition to the antechamber which led out to the giant's fur-lined lounge, Mitzi allowed a little more light to shine upon the dumbfounded expression of the art-work. She had indeed seen this angry raw effect on the doll-like face somewhere before, on a leg of long-forgotten lamb Mary Mary had found hidden in the back of the freezer and set to thaw on the kitchen table; it was freezer burn.

If a few days earlier Chovihani had successfully flagged down a lift from the passing giant  out on the tundra and thanked his good fortune that any further journeying on foot had been curtailed , he now cursed his luck at having been removed from the Mittel Europa Waiting Room, and at being temporally displaced by a soul-mate who clearly put the acquisition of unethically-sourced  luxury goods above their relation. Cascading from the back of a fast moving sledge, bundled up in fur upholstery which, he had a suspicion, had not exactly come loose accidently, Chovihani sat in a deep trench of snow, his ankle in agony, his cries drowned out in the wake of loud imbecilic laughter..

Mary Mary, lost in rhapsodies of fur was completely oblivious to Chovihani’s disappearance;  The giant gave Mary Mary’s beard another affectionate tug while thinking what a shame it would be when the time came to remove his co-passengers beautiful ears; always the first protrusion to succumb to frost-bite; the blackening effect, experience had taught him, hastened the decay of the face as a whole. Until then she would make a wonderful companion during the long perpetual cold and seamless and dark days of the midnight sun; he would enjoy her store of tunes and poetry, she, in return, would have unhindered access to fur. 

Yes, indeed he would smother her in fur, no, literally smother her; for he knew that one day she would grow restless and, like the others, begin to talk of being homesick, of missing the bustle of a metropolis, of the need to resume a career, and gradually to carp on endlessly about a yearning for some sort of night-life!

Out-andOut Liars; Part 2. Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters; Chapter 2, Part 11

                                                                             11.

In the fur trapper’s ice cave Mary Mary, celebrity drag chanteuse and her pet Chihuahua Mitzy found themselves surrounded by bounty beyond avarice. The giant, realizing what a song-bird he had found in this bearded beauty, presented her with piles of pelts he had tracked, thawed and stripped from the frozen carcasses of arctic bears and seals. In the dark days of the endless midnight-sun, the giant had even turned his hand to a bit of design and had fashioned stunning creations some of  which Mary Mary now modelled in the manner of  IT girls observed on Russian reality TV. Under the spoils of the dinner table Mitzy glinted and glimmered Swarovski-wise imbedded in a cot of fur.

“We go hunting”. Said the giant in a staccato basso-profundo voice to Chovihani    “ What is mine is also yours’ ”. He said to Mary Mary ina glissando pianissimo.

She drew a swathe of cream polar fur about her neck, and disregarding her new-found soul-mate she  stared adoringly up at the giant. The giant reached down and tugged Mary Mary’s beard with affection. This hurt but Mary Mary felt the blood stirring in her loins.”I would love to sit up beside you on your sleigh” she said girly-girly unconsciously offering up her, if somewhat scraggy swan-like throat for display. “Ouch!”, shouted Mary Mary  coquettishly as the giant allowed himself another tug. The giant let out the laugh of an imbecile.

Mary Mary was lifted up beside the giant;  from the comfort of her fur upholstered  banquette she felt like the Snow Queen in the children’s story The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe as she surveyed a pack of huskies straining at the leash.

The pale-green in Chovihani’s eyes grew darker,  jealousy taking hold, yet he held back on any action that might alienate him from his host or separate him from his unethically sluttish companion. He climbed onto the back of the vast sledge. With a whip crack and a roar which caused a distant avalanche, they sped off across the tundra leaving a stubborn Mitzy behind in her own canine seventh heaven, with a guiltily gnawed bone, snug among the treasures of her quest.

 

Deference can be deadly, apparently; after all, the inability of first officers to countermand the erroneous judgement of their airline captains for fear of crossing the rigid cultural boundaries of status, had it not led, like the Sherpas confronted on Everest with their Caucasian overlords, to catastrophe? The disappearance of the jet-stream, carolled into the pinpoint centre of the North Pole to deliver up the Blarney Stone was having a similarly deleterious effect on planes piloted by crews who had all undergone rigorous courses in self-assertiveness. As the corridor of rapid air that propels aeroplanes across continents at one third of the time and twice the speed vanished, fights broke out in the decelerating stack over the northern hemisphere. That these fights were wont to break out at each and every lunchtime in front of a Coke-Cola dispenser, especially during the latter half of the three –month Self-Assertive Course was a given, but at several hundred thousand feet, an air stewardess claiming to know more than a first officer or Captain in matters of piloting a jumbo jet would not have the same out-come as the argy-bargee in front of a vending machine.

As planes formerly on auto-pilot were sluggishly catapulted off course control towers had difficulty discerning leadership among the mêlée of egos vying for...well, leadership. Long before the planes were shouted down by a volley of invectives by recruits from the Harlem School of Straight-Talking, the fracas communicated from the cockpit sounded as though they were already going down as character-building exercises were being lethally re-enacted. That the airborne confusion was ethnic in origin would, in the days and weeks following the near-miss remain unclear-An army of international statisticians,- who live only to discover self-alienating patterns, interpret these chronically collated patterns and then in state-funded institutions find themselves with scissors and paper cutting out...well, patterns – had all missed the blindingly obvious....

Like brogue-shod Riverdancers those who professed assertiveness over a country fanned sluggishly out of their own over-oversubscribed parliamentary control tower. While the nation took shelter from the daily debris of inane and feeble edicts raining down on them from the hothouse corridors of...well, hot air, serious men and women of action squeezed pass the pinstriped shoe-shuffling obstacles, ferrying the real victims in the real world in from the country’s wreckage-strewn shoreline.

Out-and-Out Liars, part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and other Monsters, Chapter 2, part 10

                                                                  10.

It is said that Mary Mary spoke her poems for the giant for two hours, for three hours, for four hours, in hunger not thinking of herself but the beautiful green-eyed man who sat beside her; the giant wanting her, aching for her, the dark troubles within his mind fell silent with each deepening line. The giant would lean forward and reach out to her with a hand the size of an anvil then draw back lest he snap the instrument from which the words flowed.

Seven times the strength of seven men; to push the door

Seven goddesses in gowns of seasonal hues; waiting to take you back again,

Away from summer’s window; to the watery pools of grey clouds

A howling that is heard off shore; like the raider’s plunder,

Instilling fear in the heart; still the world is ringed in darkness.

Larvae trapped in dew, a teardrop of the morning sun; on a blade of grass;

A new-born foal rises; in its dewy eyes a circling,

Up here the land has drained of pools of sky; young to feed and to be fed upon,

“Loverley, loverly loverly” sighs Moira MacManara,

“Grandmothers teach their little darlings; how to make daisy chains...”

Followed through the door; skipping into summer,

“Take your pick”, says the designer

“I can’t see the wood for the trees”. The young man said.

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?  Clear your head”.

Time to hunt the feast, defend the land, there is work to be done.

At day’s end after battle’s approach and sunlit slaughter, all is shared,

In poet’s glow of poet’s fire, a hill of the finest praise into the long night

Through the knot-weed of envy,wise old age watches, it is time to return

Stepping off the shore to catch the wind; they have landed.

What’s that roar?

 Oh, that?”, she says her eyes well versed in misdirection

.“A storm in a tea cup”.

Numb with poetry Mary Mary fell into Chovihani’s arms; Chovihani, too numb to touch, his spirit so filled they did not need to. The giant sat transfixed upon a faraway point, a halcyon time long before his aloneness, in a spell-like trance. And that is how they finally found themselves at table, filling their stomachs with the giant's fair of cured meats, seaweed and kelp salads, eggs the size of paper-weights, water from the purest snow.

They had been tipped gently onto the edge of a wide and firm expanse of polar ice-shelf just before the narwhals dove the 5000 feet depths to their feeding ground, and just after a dozen surfaced from those very fathoms each with a horn which each again nudged towards Chovihani . The length of each tusk, far longer than any in the schools of narwhals fanning out of the bottle-necked leads into open sea- betokened both the seniority and kingship of the deceased ancestor. As Chovihani gathered the rendered horns he inadvertently ‘heard’ the words, “Levelled vale”.

Snow-blind and exhausted they walked over the tundra insignificant captives of the vast  jet-stream. Mary Mary’s particular set of mirages were not visual; she was hearing snippets of show tunes.

Halleluja Cum On get happy

We’re going to the promised land...

It was not clear whether Judy Garland was in Mary Mary's head or if the troubled star was shadowing her at a distance close enough to project through a blizzard.

Halleluja, Come on...!

Were not in Kansas any more!

“You can say that again”, replied Mary Mary.

“What’s that?” Asked Chovihani

Somewhere over the rainbow!

Way up high..Were off to see the wizard..!

Follow the yellow brick road!

“Can I borrow you fur dear?”

“What fur?” queried Chovihani adjusting the bundle of horn tied to his back.

“Don’t rain on my parade..!

Mary Mary lagged behind, the carousel of musical hits momentarily distracting her; she could no longer see her own hand in front of her face, Chovihani was nowhere to be seen.

People, people who need people,

Are the luckiest people in the world, 

Barbara Streisand from a ghostly limousine.  Mary Mary had turned into one of her stage alter-egos West-End Wendy and was channelling more hits, and a few flops, than her slender mind could...well, channel.

We’re having a heatwave...put your lips together and blow...,

The words returned to her like a volley of slaps. No, they were actual slaps; when Chovihani finally traced his steps back to Mary Mary she was locked in an hysteria of Hollywood vamps; Mitzy Gaynor, Rita Hayworth, Marylyn Monroe among others all vied for centre-stage within her in a half naked and potentially lethal mash-up.

Chovihani was adjusting Mary Mary’s knit-ware when the blizzard suddenly abated, his beloved was coming to her senses. Directly beneath them a half-opened frozen hand protruded through the snow. A hundred yards away another half-open hand, then the same distance again, another, forming a perfect circle; unbeknown to them they had arrived at the Vale of Dead Explorers, otherwise known as The North Pole. 

Chovihani instinctively knew what he had to do. His actions would have nothing to do with his new family on an immediate and personal level for the words’ I love humanity, its people I can’t stand,’ rang unaccountably in his head, and his gift of clear-sight-through-touch had taught him to look on the obvious as sign-posts for the hidden. Striding forward drawing each twenty foot tusk from his bundle like broadswords he placed the thick base of each through the half-opened grasp of each explorer; it was a perfect fit and before long twelve spiralling golden staffs stood erect, gleaming like slender menhirs against the blue sky.

“Nothings happening !” Exclaimed Mary Mary after a short time contemplating the polar art installation.

Chovihanis stepped within the giant circle and closed his eyes. Mary Mary and Mitzy watched as the Roma gypsy walked to each tusk and placed a hand upon it. He appeared to be listening intently. Mitzy, however was seeing something entirely different; in a circle stood twelve perfectly restored, if somewhat holographically formed men in formless black cloaks and equally black pointy hats the sides of which covered the face. To Mitzy each apparition was reciting something Mitzy thought sounded like the constant drone of human activity in the city. Mitzy also saw the shape of the whole, the etheric shape. She had seen this once before, somewhere in London when she was a puppy and Mary Mary stood at a doorway in summer arguing with a red faced man, with a neck like a blood-hound who would not let Mary Mary enter; a vast circular library, a dark statue set in its own alcove, a library somewhere near a grove of tress where the other dogs' markings smelt of fresh salmon.  

It was not that Mary Mary did not want to enter the circle, she had the vague feeling that she was neither ready nor entitled to, but she nevertheless understood, deep within her that a change was taking place through her connexion with the man to whom knowledge of some kind was being imparted.  At this point Chovihani looked up into the sky.

From all directions the great climatic cincture that is the jet stream was being drawn into, first, the horizon, then, into the rim of the circle, a haloed reflection, outside of which Mary Mary felt warmer but also realized she was standing in melt-water. Four seasons a second raged with the perimeter of the golden horns like the pastel images of street painting in a down-pour. At the circle’s centre the stone monument engraved with explorer's names disintegrated, its bricks carrying off national flags and slamming them into the ice a great distance away. Whatever force was behind this phenomenon it was not British, American or Scandinavian.The tumultuous Circle narrowed until Mary Mary feared for Chovihani’s life. It came to a dark point directly above the base laid bare by the storm. There was a flash of lightening and a slowing down of time, the air heaved with anticipation; it was as if Moses would appear, or the Arch of the Covenant. Suddenly the dark funnel above the North Pole collapsed in on itself; as suddenly a greyish lintel fell out of the sky landing on the plinth of the former monument to claimants of the northern axis of the planet.

The jet-stream expanded and like a flock of migrating swans, first black then white then silver, disappeared out to every horizon; the air chilled once more and the melt-water icicled over.The twelve hands disappeared under the ice with the abruptness of twelve Ladies of the Lake. Mitzy was left wondering why one of the cloaked figures had given him a knowing wink before vanishing.

In the relative calm Mary Mary embraced Chovihani, mindful not to crush her pet, she was staring over her lovers shoulder at the new monument when it began to dawned on her that she had seen it somewhere before. Yes, she remembered, 8 kilometers from the City of Cork, County Cork, Ireland.

“The Blarney Stone.!”

Out-and-Out Liars; Part 2. Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2; part 9

                                                                           9.

“All Eastern Europeans are Romanians!”

“No, No, I am Roma, from Romania ”, said Chovihani eyeing up the long wooden table laden with food and their eight foot giant  host with equal caution while recalling a Roma saying, ‘when all the Roma are gone, Europe will lose touch with its nomadic past forever’.

“Romanians!” Insisted the giant.

 Mitzy had wondered into another fur-partitioned chamber of the ice-cave and was staring up at a jar full of human ears. Chovihani probed further into the dimmed recesses of his host’s obdurate brain. 

“You have been to Romania? I can tell you are a well travelled man. Remind me, what is its Capital City?”.

The giant stalled, or rather his brain shut down completely against the onslaught of words; he became suspicious; he sensed a threat but could not tell whether it was coming from the curious ragged, half-starved creatures standing before him stealing glances at his food, from a missed opportunity outside his cave or from the distant knowledge of the horror of his own internal reality; a crippled messenger completed the course across the confused forecourt of his mind;

“Romanians!” said the guardian of warmth, food and polar fur.

Mary Mary, Chovihani and Mitzy had hitched a lift on the back of the lead narwhal, one of many who had rescued the adventurers and polar fur explorers from Aissur Yadot, a pernicious multi-tongued monster dashed into an Olympian vortex the depth and darkness of which could only be fathomed by the silvery lint of light flashing insipidly against its black walls.

In the ensuing silence,- broken only by a gentle lapping of water against meter-high walls of blue ice the gentle meandering progress of  narwhals through watery lanes spread out like fissures in the vast landscape - Mary Mary rode on in splendid wonder. As more and more Narwhals surfaced from leads opening up it was clear to the passengers, stunned by the grace and beauty of the gentle giant upon which they travelled, that it might not be clear which direction some narwhals were headed.

Chovihani, whose name in the Roma language means Seer had the gift of a Clairsentient, the ability to read, or ‘see’ through the palms of his hands the cumulative history, and future of objects, people and animals. As he cradled Mary Mary both hands gripping the narwhal’s cork-screw tusk, Chovihani had already begun ‘reading’. The narwhal’s pure clean spirit allowed Chovihani’s gift of sight-through-touch to not only grasp the momentous song-lines of past and future migrations, bordered then reduced  by the Bear, the Eagle, the Maple Leaf, and the Viking long-boat; ( Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Denmark respectively; Chovihani also ‘saw’ in symbols)  ;there was oil on his hands, he was able ‘see’ throughout his body the Narwhal’s journey with all the five primary senses triggered and the air stank of crude.

The Narwhal travelled through the palms, up through his arms and spread out into his senses; Chovihani was overcome with a liquid beatitude, at the same moment the imploding depth of the gentle giant’s feeding ground compressed Chovihani, then a vertiginous feeling of surfacing followed a sensation of exploding panic; the cumulative effect of times when long harsh winters froze over boreholes; the dread and lament of mass drowning was being keenly felt. Chovihani could ‘see’ beyond the imploding pressure and beauty of the narwhal feeding grounds and their tragically and more recently frequent seasonal oxygen privation and the bewilderment of vanishing krill. Suddenly, the vision clouded over; his body a smooth dolmen of mottled flesh was being hacked from all sides; all around the blood of slaughter and...here, Chovihani’s emotions spiked with a horror both repellent and compelling as, in his mind’s-eye the  Narwhal’s symbol for human-being stood before him; a tall lacerated mottled blue bi-pedal whale-corpse.

As they gently plashed and sloshed through the tundra-canals, Mary Mary was unaware of the sensorial nightmare visions playing out within the warm man in whose arms she allowed herself to feel safe. Ahead, she calculated five hundred or more narwhals wending their way across the transmigrating scene, criss-crossing at newly-opened inter-sections. At these crossroads the narwhals gathered a while and appeared to Mary Mary to be mingling, the air abuzz with a volley of clicks, whistles and knocks; an exchange of news and gossip before each air-kissed the other with their mindful tusks and glided off, a brief glance behind, like sashaying drag queens freed from an over-crowded dressing room. 

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters; Chapter 2, Part 8

                                                                             8.

Just as Aissur Yadot, the multi-storey steely-knived beast was about to grind Mary Mary, Mitzy and Chovihani into the ice, all froze as a wind picked up from somewhere beyond the frozen shelves of pack ice. Out to sea a procession of what looked to Mary Mary like the horns of unicorns, hundreds, one behind the other forming a gigantic circle. Each horn 10  feet long, nine inches thick at the cork-screwed base spiralling up golden from somewhere beneath the sea and sharply tapering off at right and left-angles, like the arms and elegantly poised fingers of synchronized swimmers. The clock-wise motion of the unicorns, moving ever faster and faster caused the water at the circles’ centre to become turbulent and dip suddenly, collapsing at it were in one deep groaning vortex while the wind above rung like Tebetan Singing-bowls.

Chovihani noticed that the bloated mottled greyish-blue bodies that had strewn the area, staring up through the ice like drowned sailors, had disappeared. Meanwhile, Aissur Yadot was compelled toward the circular golden vision the centre of which was obscured by the prismatic play of light through sea spray. The whirling horns were accompanied by a percussion of clicks, whistles and knocks.
The ripple-effect from the golden sea unicorns caused not only a cold gyre of air to whip and lash around Aissur Yadot whose articulated parts began to jam and freeze, but the wave-machine effect of the dance caused the ice-field to split apart until Mary Mary and company found themselves drifting out of harm’s reach on their own pancake of snow. The articulated Rubik’s Cube that was Aissur Yadot twisted and screeched rusting in the briny onslaught with the din of a thousand working scrap-metal yards. The fragile ledge, upon which it shifted and frantically jammed, tilted and bobbed precariously. Pulled toward the golden ring shot through with iridescent shards, like rainbow banners above an Olympic Stadium, a magical chorus of paralysing chatter concealed its treacherous centre, a conspiratorial song directed the whole.

Mary Mary, Chovihani and Mitzy saw themselves reflected in two giant knives of shiny steel as Aissur Yadot dug in. The rest of his armour rendered useless, its slatternly eyes fixed on Chovihani conveying a final vengeful promise of pogroms as it was dragged closer to the edge of the terrible whirlpool. The clicks, whistles and knocks intensified then, of a sudden the circle of gilt tusks broke rank, obliterating the boundary between Aissur Yadot and the howling vortex as the monster was dashed against the monstrous funnel’s sheer walls.

As the synchronized swimmers disappeared beneath the waves, a mass of water rushed in to fill the yawning chasm and levelling out, the wind abated and the briny sea settled.

Mary Mary, Chovihani and Mitzy drifted in the calm waters on their polar raft wondering how they would make it across the inky black avenues and lanes opening up before them; they were in shock. It was at this point that Mary Mary began to unravel.

Unbeknown to Mary Mary a perpendicular golden horn had broken through the water and had pierced through a loop in one of the outer layers of her knit-ware. Before she could disentangle herself, the aquatic knitting needle was moving beside the raft of ice tugging yards of insulating wool in its wake. Before she could alert Chovihani to her plight, another tapered horn was about to counter- cross the first needles line of flight; behind yet more needles were approaching; Mary Mary realized to her horror that she was about to be crocheted to death!

“Quick, jump on!”  Chovihani shouted as he gently pushed his beloved forward.

Mary Mary, Chovihanis and Mitzy stepped onto the greyish-blue mottled back of the first in a long line of Narwhals heading out along meandering leads towards their summering grounds.

Out-and-Out Liars Part 2, Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters. Chapter 2 Part 7

                                                                            7

Mary Mary and Chovihani, walked a hundred yards apart as they fought through an Arctic blizzard; it is not an uncommon instinct on the initial meeting of soul-mates for those very soul-mates to want to run as far away from one other as possible. In the vastness of the Arctic tundra, with her pet Chihuahua wrapped snug in a muffler of improvised knit-ware, Mary Mary was throwing a charade of tantrums all designed to get herself lost in the general white-out punctuated by the ever-loving yet possessive attentiveness of Chovihani, who reminded her that not only might she die in the 19 degree sub -zero temperatures if her bare-shouldered impressions of Hollywood actresses persisted, but also that if she cheated on him during one of her momentary disappearances, he would strangle her where she stood.

They had recently met in and escaped from the Ice Labyrinth, leaving behind the pernicious and monstrous sirens Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb both of whose imperceptible droning leitmotivs ossified the listener in kow-towing dread. The more defiantly blood-curdling Aissur Yadot, last witnessed clawing its way through the glacial walls of Eyes’ melancholy abode, was, outside in the open, pursuing Mary Mary and Chovihani . Sounds, as of fingernails drawn across classroom blackboards, echoed across the ice-scape pursuing them under-foot, terrifying Mary Mary and setting Mitzy’s teeth permanently on edge.

Between gaps in his terror Chovihani could distinguish greyish-blue forms, as of sailors drowned, their bloated bodies peering, mottled and milky-eyed, from beneath the permafrost. At one moment of lucid terror they froze in each other’s arms looking this way and that as they realized the sheer numbers below the frozen watermark stretching out for miles beneath the soles their feet. In the distance, the myriad claws of Aissur Yadot approached in deafening gyrations of ice.

A gigantic articulated carbuncle of boils, boils in between which pores pocked the beast. Each pore a hole, each hole a prison cell.; floor upon floor, storey upon storey. As the series of independently moving blocks, the rotations of which propelled the edifice forward upon razor sharp claws, Mary Mary could see that the claws belonged to those of gigantic bears rather than those of an eagles.

“This way. Lead it further out onto frozen sea!”. Shouted Chovihani.

Mary Mary followed as Aissur Yadot gained on them. She could see that inside each cell, behind its rows of bars, were not actual living and breathing individuals but, in fact the Talking-, and Skyping-heads of Bedroom Academics.

From the Babel that towered above them, the ranting of a thousand or so incarcerated Western voices treacherously decried their own countries short-comings for £9.000 a Judas Kiss; more angles than a Rubiks’ Cube they failed to discern through the honey-eyed questions the true view from Aissur Yadot’s green-eyed vistas , encouraged in their revolutionary froth through subtle changes in direction cloaked by Aissur Yadot’s chameleon-like skin, its eyes as alluring as a whore in a gulag. It was short wonder that the low-slung gaping mouth of Aissur yadot reminded Mary Mary of the entrance to the Tower of London, Traitors’ Gate, seen through twin fangs, as mesmerizing as smiled whispers between war-time, and peace-time traitors Lord Haw Haw, Max Kaiser, Stacy Herbert and Leni Riefenstahl.

Mary Mary screamed covering her ears. "Somebody make them stop!".

Peering over the edge of the largest of several million new open sewers now manifesting in the middle of every Russian living room, the now exiled French veteran actor Gerard Depardieu turned to Edward Snowdon the exiled NSA employee and asked,

“Tell me something I didn’t know?” They were in the Green Room of Aissure Yadot new lair.

“No, you first”. Returned Mr Snowdon.

“Well…Okay then. I did not leave France, tearing up my passport, for tax reasons”.

“Oh?”

“Non, mon ami, que je suis con! I am an idiot. I left because I knew I should not have taken the role of Alexandre Dumas (Pere).

“Oh". said Edward Snowdon WASPishly. “Hey, can you see plastic party cups and plates down there” he said pointing down the black hole in the centre of Russia's main TV broadcasting building.

“Office party....inauguration…how do you say…opening ceremony?”. Said Depardieu

“Pardon me Gerald. Do go on.”

“Gerard..Ger-rar-d. He, was black, wasn’t he…Ah, que je suis bête! I knew, of course I knew…but my head is bigger than my nose..quoi faire! Que je suis un salaud. There was a public out-cry, seeing that the original Dumas Pere’s authorship of his adventure was completement erased and while he was alive. Je suis un sale blanc…je lui a fait la meme chose. I did the same thing to the Father of Alexandre Dumas author of Les Trois Mousquettaires,The Three Muskateers writer. I am a coward”.

After a pause Mr Snowdon said. “ I wouldn’t be so hard on your self, most of white America doesn’t believe Barrack Obama wrote his own life story.”

“Vraiment!? Did you read that in the data?” ask Monsieur Depardieu.

“Don’t need to." Then almost to himself, Snowdon muttered. "Actors are Soft-Power Poster-boys,"  then snapping out of reverie he coninued. "There’s an almost autistic wall of short-sightedness and dunderhead white supremacy in the US”.

“ En Europe too. Well, That’s why I am here. I am an exile of my vanity”. There was a long pause in which Edward Snowdon pointed out the greyish blue bloated bodies floating in the depth of the sewer.

“The out-going TV Company”. Depardieu said with a shrug. "Look!" the former-French national said leaning dangerously over the rim of the sewer. "An almost full bottle of Vodka. Quel gaspillage!. What a waste!. Isn't that the old liberal anchorman still holding on to it? un vrai poivron, tout comme moi...sante mon pauvre brave! On est tous dans la merde...we are all in the shit."

“You know those guys, those American and European Academics paid to talk against the West?" Edward Snowdon asked suddenly?. "Well, they’re all tracked…every last one of them”.

“C’est entendu…That’s understandable”. Said the French actor looking around aware that their every word was being monitored.

“No but the crazy thing is, they’ve started appearing in the middle of people’s living rooms here in Russia”.

“What?... you mean..?

“Yeah, I do.”

 

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2 . Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2 Part 6

                                                                                 6.

MOOGY’S SPLIT HIS FINGERNAIL. BENEFIT BASH AT CLUB...NOW. This was the text that vibrated into the awareness of Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary five minutes into a House of Commons' debate on the rise of Great Britain's dependency on Food-Banks and the increase in famine conditions which had already prompted the Red Cross to launch, for the first time since World War II, a TV appeal for aid for the country's 600,000 starving poor, 20,000 of which, children, will be going hungry this Christmas.

“In the Beatles' song, Eleanor Rigby, Mr Speaker, the first two lines”  said a Labour Party back-bencher, one of a score eager to add to the three hour debate.”Mr Speaker, If I may quote Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles.".The MP's seniority in years demanded a reply. “You may”, said The Speaker of the House. “ ‘ Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been’. I would like to ask the House, why they think the lady in the song needed to pick up rice, at all?”

The Tories suddenly burst out laughing; one of their number had thought it appropriate to shout out something about liking weddings.

“She was starving, Mr Speaker”, continued the Labour back-bencher indignantly. “I am also reminded of an article that recently appeared in a Tory broadsheet on the popularity of job applications to be a barista, that is B.A.R.I.S.T.A , another name for a sales assistant in the capital’s coffee shops; 5000 applications to every vacancy. Without any irony whatsoever the heartless nonentity of a journalist goes on to elaborate on the love of the coffee bean as primary and unique cause for the disproportionate numbers applying. Like the Tories and Lib-Dems, the writer, living in his own callous conservative bubble, failed to grasp the basic point; desperation within current job market.”

The Minster for Work and Pensions rotated his phone in his pocket. He couldn’t quite picture exactly who Moogy was. Married to Cynthia Kenross-Tweedsmuir, something in Nuclear Fuel. He caught the tail-end of the laughter and, ever eager to fit in since the days he was mercilessly bullied by members of Bullingdon Club, he rocked with exaggerated mirth. This sickening response to the plight of those who, while working still found themselves standing, once a week before shelves of food donated to, and collected by the Trussell Trust and various church and charitable organisations - was witnessed not only by the country through their TV sets, but by the dozen or so users of the very same Food Banks who had been bussed in to watch the debate from the gallery; five of whom threw up.

Also caught on camera was the Secretary’s deputy minister, Esther McVey peering down at something Iain Duncan Smith was holding in the general area of his crotch. Miss McVey registered the content of the text also recognising its sender, Owen Patterson the Minister for Food. THE TRUFFLES WON’T KEEP.

It was unfortunate too that she chose this televised moment to lick her lips. Her senior member caught this gesture and found himself caught between two urges, both of which necessitated get a quick get-away.

“Mr Speaker”, another Labour back-bencher stood up. In my constituency of Tunbridge Wells at seven O’clock every evening an unsightly scrum breaks out in front the shelves of reduced produce, food already at the end of its use-by and sell-by dates.

Rumbling jollity could be heard coming from the ruddy-faced Tories.

“Order!, Order!”, The speaker was battling against a mawkish chorus of jeers and general hilarity.

“...It is a case of Tax breaks for the rich and Food Banks for the poor. Mr Speaker...Mr Speaker. Trying to make ends meet on a living wage not fit for purpose the throng, mainly the working middle-class, might I add,…the throng around food not fit to feed to a dog, is such, Mr Speaker…” A crescendo of hilarity rose like a parliment of birds from one side of the House. “…is such, Mr Speaker that security...that security has had to be called in to control those whose only crime is that of trying to feed their children”.

To say there was not weeping in the aisles at this speech would be an out-and-out lie; the Labour MP for Tonbridge Wells failed to see the joke.

There followed a sudden lull in the unbridled mirth coming from the Conservative benches as Esther McVey eager to  be released from her duties and get to Moogy’s  Split Fingernail Benefit Bash at the Club in Saint James, hastily took the floor.

“It seems to me Mr Speaker that the Right Honarable Member for Tonbrige Wells’ time would be better spent at a more high-end supermarket which does not cater to the mob. As for the increasing dependency on Food banks, I remind the House that the 1.5 trillion debt accrued under the Labour government has to be repaid by each and every one of us. We must all breed within our means, and I propose that any surplus be given to banks and not, Mr Speaker, Food banks.” Miss McVey returned to her seat.

The House fell silent for the first time in a century. A Labour back-bencher, whose hand was aloft, announced himself to the Speaker and the House.  “Labour Minister for Ulster”. He turned towards Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey, then to those gathered in the House of Commons and in a rich Northern Irish accent, asked wryly  “And is that the Right Honourable Lady’s modest proposal*”.


* In 1729 the Satirist, Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels anonymously published A Modest Proposal  a pamphlet detailing the solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland by suggesting that the Irish sell their children as comodities, namely as food for the rich...for Christmas.