MOON TIME FOUND NAME BROKEN
five short stories

written by Mikis Mazarakis
paintings by Mayke Sassen

soundtracked from youtube with
Rokia Traoré - Tounka

LOST AND FOUND

In a city where there wasn’t very much to do, three friends found themselves to be very bored. All of the fun stuff that one could do, the friends had already done.

One night, one of the three friends had had enough. “I’m tired of being bored”, he said. “Me too”, his two friends echoed. “I want to discover something new”, all three of them then said, one after another.

The friends were sure that this something, this something new, was not to be found in their hometown. So they went to the harbour. There, in the harbour, lay their boats. There, in the harbour, no one else was to be found. They were all by themselves. Except for the boats, for whom nothing in the harbour escaped.

Excited, they ran. Ran between the boats, ran with excitement, ran fast. So fast that none of them took notice when something out of one of their pockets fell to the ground. Something belonging to them, some thing not big, very little, very large.

In the harbour, without the three friends being aware of a hut, in a hut empty and abandoned, a girl was about to fall asleep on the ground when she had caught sight of the friends running, caught sound of their running feet. She, unlike any of them, had noticed when their little, large something had fallen to the ground, just a couple of armlengths away from the hut. She picked the something up. She looked at it, took at it, took it, locked it, in her hand, then followed the markings of the foot steps of the running of the friends of the city of the dreams of discovery of something new, somewhere else.

“Finally! Away from this town! Away, away, away!” the first of the three friends called out once they had reached their boats. “Away and never back again, I will discover the land of riches, fortunes and fame”, said the second of the three friends. “As for me, I will search and I will find, the land which no one has seen and where no one ever has been”, then said the third of the free friends.

One took off to the left. One took off to the right. One took off to the reverse. Three took off with dreams of a future brighter than present and past. And three turned around when they suddenly heard a bright shout cutting through the resounding silence of this moonlit night. On the shore stood a girl and she was shouting to them, while they were on their way to sail away. Away and away. “Friends! I found this something that you dropped out of your pocket when you ran through the harbour!”

The three looked at her but didn‘t listen, because they couldn‘t hear, couldn‘t hear what it was that she was shouting. “Friends! Please, come back!” The voice of the girl hit them like cotton and the whirly winds were already caught in their sails, so the three friends just kept looking at her and kept not hearing her and kept floating farther and farther away from shore, from the sure, and from this distance of quite far, they couldn‘t see what it was, this something that the girl held in her hand, trying to show them, trying to warn them, not to part without it. “Quiet!” one the the friends then yelled back at her. “We can‘t hear you! We can‘t hear your voice!”

These words made the girl silent. They made her sit down. They made her look and only look when the three friends went their separate ways out on the big, deceptive ocean.

All of this took place long after the period in our history when the earth was flat. Since quite some time back, the earth had begun to transform into the shape of a round ball which, as you probably already know, is how our planet is shaped these modern days that we currently live in.

All of this took place not nowadays, and not yesterdays.

All of this happened very many days before the nowadays and yesterdays, a very long time ago. So at the time when the three boys were the three boys, the planet on which they lived and dreamed and sailed had rather the shape of an egg than a ball, if you understand what I‘m trying to say. Do you?

Since the friends took off from the downside of earth, they faced many difficulties when setting out to sail on the oceans. The storms were twice as raging when sailing upwards. The wind was thrice as inconsiderous when sailing upwards. The sun was frice as abscent when sailing upwards.

All three of the friends chose their own path to find the land of their different dreams. Days went by. The weeks went by. The months went by, and no one found anything new, no one found something new. “I‘m sick of this ocean!”, “To hell with this ocean!”, “I‘m sick of this searching!” each one of the three friends yelled from different parts of the globe. But no one heard them, of course.

Off course.

When the first of the friends reached the top of the earth that looked like an egg, everything started getting easier. At this point, all he had to do was to let go, to let be, to follow the downhill slope of the ocean, enabling him to see, for the first time really see, the sea.

Not even the sails were any longer necessary. It was that simple. A few days later, the two other friends reached the top of the egg, the planet, as well, and for them too, it became very much easier to sail now that it was being done downwards. However, even though the sailing was troublefree, they still weren‘t able to find the something new that they were dreaming of. They wanted to go north but where was north? They wanted south, but where was south? They wanted east, but went west, when wanting the best.

Week after week passed. Month and month went by. The years flew away while sailing away, from everything they knew, and all they could see was the endless, seedless sea.

But one day, something new happened. One of the three friends was sound asleep when all of a sudden, his boat hit a rock, or something of equal density. He rose up, rushed up, stuck his head up and saw the harbour. Same, the same, the same harbour as the one he and his friends had left so long ago.

On the shore sat the girl. She had grown. But she was still the girl. In her hand she held something. The something that she had found on that night of resounding silence and a shout so bright, so very long ago, when it had fallen to the ground out of a pocket in the midst of running feet.

Just as the first of the three friends started approaching the girl, there was another collision right in front of them. This time, it was the second of the three friends that crashed into the harbour and shortly thereafter, the third of them arrived in this everything but smooth fashion.

They all greeted and they all didn‘t say much and they all didn‘t desire to say much. So without words, they sat down on the shore, next to the girl.

“Finally. You’re back. Finally you‘re here. Finally, for the first time, you’re here”, she said.

BROKEN WHOLE

It was long ago that I received my compass. It was old and had some rust on the sides and the arrow was also rusty. At first, I didn‘t know how it worked, so I asked. I should look at the arrow and the direction in which it pointed, I was told. That way, when I got lost, the arrow would know, would tell me, where to go.

I used to wonder what the arrow did, who did the arrow ask, where did the arrow go, when the arrow itself didn‘t know where to go? I used to wander.

The compass was old and rusty. I wondered why. “Does it really work?” I asked. You shouldn’t let the rust trick you, I was told. Then the arrow broke. Broke in two. One part fell off and the other just kept hanging upside down all the time.

I wanted my compass to be mended. Even if it was old. And rusty. I went to see a man. The same man who long ago had given the compass to me. The man said that he would take a look. He said that he knew about these things and that I should come back a few days later.

I came back a few days later. The man said he hadn‘t yet had the time to have a look. I should come back a few days later. I came back a few days later. Difficult, it was very difficult to repair it, I was told. The procedure required at least one more week in order to be succesful.

I came back after two weeks. The man said that I mended him. He said that if he repaired my compass I would not come back. If I would not come back, he would break. Break in two, he said. One part would fall off and the other would just keep hanging upside down.

I kept coming back. A few days later. A few days later. A few days later, so that the man wouldn‘t break. And as for my compass, I no longer have it. He has it.

I hope that one day he will be able to mend him, so that he will be able to mend it.

NO NAME BOY

Once upon a space there was a boy, a very special boy, who was a very special boy because he had no name. The other children didn‘t like him. They couldn‘t play with someone who didn‘t have a name. Neither could they tease someone who didn‘t have a name.

The little boy grew up mostly by himself. But he didn‘t mind being lonely. Actually, he found many interesting things to do in his loneliness. He could, for example, drink a bottle of sunshine and turn himself into a walking sun, a sun with two arms and two legs. This came in very handy at times. When the sun, for example, caught a cold or for some other reason was forced to stay inside, the boy with no name, who had turned himself into a walking sun, could replace the real sun until it was feeling better again.

When by himself, the boy with no name would sometimes find a nightmare with wings behind a big oak tree in which the other children used to climb. The bewinged nightmare used to teach the boy with no name how to fly and how to fly high and how to high and how to high up into the sky, saying hi to every bird, dolphin and butterfly who also had learned how to fly.

When by himself, the boy with no name enjoyed reversing everything that was coming to an end. Reversing shows on tv. Reversing songs on the radio. Reversing sunset. Reversing leaves falling. Reversing words and poems. Reversing stories being told, so that the closer one got to the end, the more was there left to tell.

But after a few years of loneliness the boy no longer enjoyed himself as much as he had used to, when being all by himself. The bottles of sunshine, the flying nightmares, the reversing of everything coming to an end; none of this really interested him anymore. He wanted someone to play with, someone to get teased by.

So one day, the boy with no name decided that he would find his long lost name. With the sort of determination only found in desperation, he told himself that he would search for it and keep searching for it and never give up searching for it until he had found it, even if this search would turn out to be the last thing he’d do.

In accordance to his decision, the boy with no name began searching for his name. He searched far and near and everywhere. He asked his neighbours if they had seen his name. He read every newspaper every day to find clues of where his name might be. He frequently searched under his bed, because that’s where he usually found things that had disappeared. But his name wasn‘t there. It wasn‘t far, it wasn‘t near, wasn‘t anywhere, wasn‘t everywhere.

Consequently, the boy with no name decided to change strategy. He tried to recall exactly when he had lost his name. He was pretty sure that he must have had one at one point in time, perhaps it was just too long ago for him to remember. So the boy with no name sat down, started thinking, recalling, pondering, reflecting, playing and replaying every memory collected in his mind, from every second and every minute of his life, of his time.

Sitting like this, thinking like this, was what the boy with no name kept on doing for years to come. There was no other way to solve this mystery, he figured, firmly convinced that there was no other option.

The boy with no name became a young man with no name. So many years with nothing but setbacks had not made him defeated. He had never lost hope to one day find his name. As already stated, he was a very special boy, a very special young man.

On one very late night in one very cold month one woman knocked on his door. The young man with no name wondered who the one woman was and what it was that she wanted - so he asked her. One woman didn‘t care to answer, it seemed almost as if she found his question rather childish. Instead, she told the young man that he was special. “I know”, answered the young man with no name. “I have no name. I know.”

“No”, said one woman, “you are special because you are aware, that you have no name.”

The young man did not understand.

“What you are searching for is written in your eyes. Read them,” the one woman told him.

The young man understood even less and one woman then said it was time for her to leave. She had to catch the last train before midnight, she said.

The day after, the young man ran into other young men. The other young men, who used to be other children, still didn’t like the young man, and the reason was still that he had no name. Had this been a day just like any other, the young man with no name would not have bothered talking to the other young men. But this day was different. This day was the day after the night before midnight when he had encountered one woman.

The young man with no name stepped up to the other young men. “Could you look into my eyes and tell me what has been written there?” he asked. The young men did so. “Nothing. There’s nothing written in your eyes”, they then told him.

Of course, this came to no surprise to the young man. He was already aware of the fact that he had no name. He looked into the eyes of the other young men. He didn‘t know what to expect to see in them, but what he saw still suprised him. He saw nothing.

He then lowered his voice. Very carefully he whispered to the other young men, knowing that what he was about to say would hit them too hard were it to be told in any other way than a whisper.

“I want to tell all of you something important. But before I tell you this, I want to tell you another thing which is even more important.”

“We’re not interested”, the young men replied.

“Did you know, that there are insights of such magnificence, that were it possible when using words, to seize even the slightest hint of their significance, it would capture mankind and change her weather, as easily as the wind carries a feather.”

“What the heck are you trying to say?”

“I have no name.”

“We know.”

“There are no names.”

“Yes there are. We have names. But not you.”

For a short moment, the young man with no name looked at the other young men, as if trying to predict the reaction to that which he knew had to be said. And then he said it:

“No names are real. No words are real. There is no here. No now. There is no I. There is no have. No no. There is no name. Every word is imaginary. Every name, imaginary. Everything that has been said, everything being said, everything going to be said; all of it is nothing. Nothing but nothing.”

The other young men tried for a little while to understand what the young man with no name had said. They thought about it and talked about it. And then they killed him. And then they hid the young man‘s body so that it would never be discovered.

NEW MOON

In a time not too distant from the current one, our beautiful sun became very much warmer than usual and that is when the following happened.

The heat from the rays from the sun rose to such high degrees that it made the moon melt. It all started out with just some tiny little moondrops slowly dripping down on planet earth here and there, but after a few more hours of exposure to the feverish sunshine the moon began to melt like boiling ice and the moonshine poured down all over our glorious globe.

For one whole night, it rained moonshine and nothing but moonshine. The morning after, when the people awoke, their cities, villages and solitude was all covered with moonshine. But the people did not realize that it was just a melted moon that was lying everywhere around them on their streets, fields, hills and forgotten forests. This was something that had never happened before.

Perhaps, they thought, the surreal substance on the ground surrounding them was of a sort of dangerous kind?

None of them could even begin to describe it. They didn’t know what to say. The moonshine looked almost like snow, but more yellow, more glowing, more like the sun, but not at all like the sun.

Most people approached the moonshine carefully, like were they sheeple and the moonshine an unfamiliar idea. Hesitant. A little afraid. Very afraid. But one was braver than the others.

A young girl was the first who dared touching the moonshine. When she did so, nothing happened. The young girl then took some moonshine in her hand and tasted it. At first she felt nothing, but after a few minutes a bright light began to emanate from the corner of both of her eyes. Shortly thereafter, the light became brigther and the brighter it became, the brighter it became, and it didn‘t take long before the people around her started worrying. Perhaps something terrible could happen, they thought.

“There is nothing to worry about”, said the girl, “it feels amazing, almost as if I had wings”, and shortly thereafter that is exactly what happened; the little girl seemed to have gotten wings because she was no longer in touch with the ground. She floated above, levitated, shone, radiated, almost as if were she an angel.

“But this girl is no angel”, said the people, “all she did was eat some of this magic snow”, and they all went close to crazy from knowing that the moonshine, the magic snow lying there on the ground right in front of their eyes could make them float above ground, levitate, shine, radiate, almost as if were they angels.

For obvious reasons, everyone wanted to know what it was like to stand with neither foot planted on the ground even though, as they soon realized, it didn‘t take very long for the effect of the moonshine to stop working. But this was of lesser importance. Even if one could float only for just a few seconds, most people figured, it was definitely still worth it.

The rumour of the magic snow spread around the globe like sunrise. Within a few hours almost every man, woman and child had eaten of the moonshine and learned what it was like to float. But then there were some people who didn’t want to eat of the mysterious snow before it had been thoroughly examined. These people were in nothing less than a hurry to collect as much moonshine as they could before all of it would disappear into the brief levitation of mankind.

As expected, it didn‘t take long before all of the moonshine had been consumed. The relatively small amount of moonshine that had been collected by the people who weren’t as eager to levitate as their peers was all that was left. In collaboration with the foremost expertise of modern science, the remaining moonshine was put in boxes and away it was sent to a very advanced laboratory.

“How long before the examination is done?” the people asked the scientists.

“We cannot give you an exact date but taken into consideration that this substance is completely unkown to the scientific society, we find a couple of weeks as a reasonable approximation of the time necessary in order for our research to be succesful.”

Discontent spread amongst the people. They had expected it would be done much quicker than two weeks. But at the same time, they realized that there was nothing they could do to hasten the process, so they decided to recide from science and head back home instead.

It was late and after an overwhelming day like this most people were tired. As is often done when on the way home on a late evening walk, the people glanced up towards the nightsky in admiration of the stars floating in the heavens. When doing this, however, they noticed that something wasn‘t like it used to be.

The stars gleamed like they always did, the sun snored like it did every night, the darkness darked just as usual, but where was the moon? Everyone searched in every spatial direction from every corner on earth, but the moon was nowhere to be seen and nowhere to be found.

It didn’t take long before they realized what they had done. So hungry for levitation had they been that they’d eaten up the moon. The moon was gone.

They had floated, yes, but the moon was gone, and the notion of a moonless future sent a chill down the spine of mankind. Sorrow rose from the deepest depths of every conscious mind. The people in love cried for no longer having a moon beneath which they could kiss. The children cried for no longer having a man in the moon watching over them as they went to sleep each night. The old people cried for now knowing that their souls would definitely not go to the far side of the moon upon the death of their bodies.

There was nothing the people could do to get the moon back. It was gone. It had been eaten. It had been transformed into a disappearing ability to float.

The only right thing to do, most people figured, was to put the remaning moonshine back into the vault of nightly heaven where it came from. And that is what they did. Millions of people gathered to retrieve all the boxes of moonshine from the claws of modern science and then they began putting every single one of the surviving pieces back together again.

It was not an easy task. The moon would probably not look as beautiful as it once was, but the people did what they could to make it look as good as it could and since they knew that could’t do more than as good as they could, their sorrow was slowly but surely being replaced by pride.

After one month of intense moon mounting labour, the people had succeded in assembling all of the leftover pieces of moonshine. The time had come to heave it back up into the heavens. Millions of people came together to throw up the new moon with enough force for it to break through gravity and thus find its way back into orbit around our planet.

The people counted: “One, two”, and on three they threw up the moon, the new moon, and the new moon flew and it flew far and it soon found its way back into orbit around planet earth, where it supposedly belonged.

When rejoicing was over, the people gazed up in silence towards the new moon. This was a moon that they had built. This was a moon that they had saved. They smiled and they smeyeled. They knew that they would never again get to experience the reflections of a full moon, but they felt proud nonetheless. High up there, low down here, they still felt the moon floating and they still felt like the moon, floating.

WATCHING TIME

This story is about an incredibly skilful watchmaker. So skilful was this watchmaker that people from all over the country came to visit him and his little workshop in his little village. Despite his good reputation, business was not going as well as one would imagine.

Since the watchmaker never made a watch with anything other than the highest possible quality, his services were quite costly. There wasn’t many people that could afford his exclusive watches. But one of those who could was a businessman from Bigtown, whose massive wealth had been aquired from many years of dealing with diamonds.

One day, the wealthy man made his way all the way from Bigtown to Littlevillage to buy a watch from the skilful watchmaker for his son, who soon would turn ten years old. For obvious reasons, selling one of his finest and most expensive watches to the wealthy man from Bigtown made the watchmaker very pleased. He was in great need of money in order to be able to pay the rent for his tiny, silent house and his little, humble workshop.

After the purchase the wealthy businessman returned to Bigtown, satisfied for having bought such a beautiful gift for his beautiful son. Later on in the evening, however, the satisfaction was replaced by discontent.

When closely inspecting the watch, the businessman could most certainly hear that the seconds were ticking slower than seconds should be ticking. The time delay was of minuscule, but nevertheless, it was definitely a time delay and a time delay, no matter how little, is never of unsignificance.

And so on the following morning, the wealthy businessman set out for the village of the watchmaker in order to have this malfunction corrected. Upon his arrival to the little workshop the businessman explained the reason for his discontent to the watchmaker, who couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Had he, the incredibly skilful watchmaker from Littlevillage, made a watch with seconds ticking slower than seconds should be ticking? It just couldn’t be so, he thought…

The watchmaker brought the watch to his workshop for closer inspection. As he had thought, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. The seconds were ticking just as perfectly as seconds should be ticking. “This watch works just fine”, the watchmaker told the wealthy businessman from Bigtown, who replied: “No. It does not work just fine. It works very poorly. You have until tomorrow to fix it”, and with those words the wealthy businessman parted.

The mornig after he returned to the watchmaker‘s workshop. “Here you go. The seconds are now ticking impeccably”, said the skilful watchmaker, who actually hadn’t even touched the watch since last night, and handed it over to the wealthy businessman.

“Now the seconds are ticking too rapidly”, claimed the businessman. The watchmaker firmly shook his head. “It is ticking just as it should be ticking.”

However, the wealthy man was not in accord. “It is not at all ticking as it should be ticking. Anyone could hear that this ticking is ticking far too rapidly. I tell you this. I give you one more day to fix it. Tomorrow is my son‘s birthday. For your own sake, when I come by tomorrow morning, it better be working.”

Calmly, the watchmaker nodded as the wealthy businessman from left the workshop to go back to Bigtown, but deep inside he was everything but calm.

In fact, he told himself, he would prefer not to sell the watch at all to a customer who discretited his craft with such condescendent behaviour. But the watchmaker could not ignore the fact that the rent was due and his pockets were empty.

At opening hour precisely, the wealthy man stepped into the workshop once again, as he had said the day before. The watchmaker gave him the watch, which still hadn’t undergone any change whatsoever. “Here you go. The seconds are now ticking properly”, the watchmaker said.

The businessman meticulously inspected the watch. “Good job with the ticking seconds. But now the minutes are moving to fast.”

The watchmaker knew very well that everything was working correctly and that there was nothing that needed to be fixed. But just to make the wealthy customer pleased he had yet another look at it. And as expected, nothing was wrong. “Mister. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this watch. I must even say it is one of the finest watches that I’ve ever made.”

This made the businessman angry, even furious almost. “I have gone back and forth three times from Bigtown and Littlevillage and I have paid a large amount of money for the work of a watchmaker who is supposed to be the most skilful in the craft and then it turns out that this watchmaker does not even know how to make the seconds tick like seconds and minutes move like minutes. I am fed up with your abysmal service, so I want you to once and for all fix this clock right away and then I want it to be delivered to my house in Bigtown before the hour strikes twelve. Is that understood?”

But to the businessman’s surprise, the watchmaker did not comply. “No”, he said, “I will not try to fix a watch which needs not be fixed. And I will not give you this watch, I will keep it. And I want you to leave my workshop and not return in case you understood who you are and who I am. Here is your money. Now leave.”

After an initial moment of chock, the wealthy man left and returned to Bigtown - with his money but without a watch. And as for the the watchmaker, he stayed in his little, humble workshop -  without money but with his watch, and from there he watched time coming and time going, time being born and time disappear. He watched time as it is and watched the emptiness of his pockets, in some miraculous fashion, suddenly disappear.

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