MOON TIME FOUND NAME BROKEN
five short stories
written by Mikis Mazarakis
paintings by Mayke Sassen
soundtracked from youtube with
Rokia Traoré - Tounka
FOUND AND LOST
Three friends, all three of them bored. In the city where they lived there was not much to do. All of that which 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 repeated. “I want to discover something new”, all three of them with emphasis exclaimed.
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, there were no one else. They were by themselves. Except for the boats.
Excited, they ran. Ran through the harbour, ran with excitement, ran fast. So fast that none of them took notice when something fell to the ground. Something belonging to them, some thing not big, very little, very large.
In the harbour, without the three friends knowing it, in a hut long since 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 something had fallen to the ground, just a couple of armlengths away from the hut, from her sleeping 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 town 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. “Away and never back again, I’m going to discover the land of riches, fortunes and fame”, said the second of the three friends. “Me, I will search and I will find the land which no one has seen and where no one has been”, 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 and on the shore there was a girl, shouting to them, while sailing away, away and away. “Friends, friends! I found this something that you dropped when running through the harbour!”
The three looked at her but didn‘t listen because they couldn‘t hear, couldn‘t hear what she was shouting. “Friends, friends! Come back!” The voice of the girl was soft cotton and the winds in the sails were strong like mustard. The friends 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 they couldn‘t see what it was, this something that the girl was trying to show. “Quiet!” one the the friends shouted back. “We can‘t hear you! We can‘t hear your voice!”
These words of silence 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 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 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 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?
Because 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, 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 on 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 longer necessary. It was that simple. Some time after, 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 downards. 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 hardness. 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 so long ago, when it had fallen to the ground in the midst of running feet.
Just as the first of the three friends approached the girl, there was a new collision. This time, it was the second of the three friends crashing into the harbour and shortly thereafter, the third of them arrived in this everything but smooth fashion.
They greeted and they didn‘t say much and they didn‘t want to say much. So without words, they sat down on the shore, next to the girl.
“Finally. You’re back. Finally you‘re here, here for the first time.”
The first of the three friends reached for the girl‘s hand. She opened her hand and the open hand showed something for the three friends and the something opened something in the three friends, something that they had never known was something.
BROKEN WHOLE
Compass. It was long ago that I received mine. 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 was supposed to 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 wondered. What did the arrow do, who did the arrow ask, where did the arrow go, when the arrow itself didn‘t know where to go? I wandered.
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.
My compass. I wanted to mend it. Even if it was old, and rusty. I went to see a man. The same man who had given it to me, the compass, long ago. The man said he would take a look. I ought to 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 ought to 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 operation required at least one more week.
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. The 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
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. Because he had no name. He didn‘t mind being lonely. But he didn‘t feel the way people told him that he was supposed to feel, when being so lonely. Instead, he found many interesting things to do in his loneliness. He could, for example, drink a bottle of sunshine and turn 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 sun, could replace the sun until it was feeling better again.
When being by himself, occasionally it happened that he would find a nightmare with wings behind the big oak tree in which the other children used to climb. The nightmare with wings then taught the boy with no name how to fly. High, up in the sky. Saying hi, to the birds and butterflies and the dolphins who also had learned how to fly.
When by himself, he also 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 while, the boy no longer enjoyed himself as much as he used to, when being lonely. 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.
One day, he decided that he was going to find his name. With the sort of determination only found in desperation, he told himself that he would search for his name and keep searching for his name for as long as he needed in order to find it, even if this search would turn out to be the last thing he would do.
The boy with no name began searching, far and near and everywhere. He asked his neighbours if they had seen his name. Every day he read the ads in every newspaper to see if someone knew where to find his name. Several times a day he searched under his bed. Under the bed was where he usually found that which had disappeared. But his name wasn‘t there. His name wasn‘t far, wasn‘t near, wasn‘t anywhere, wasn‘t everywhere.
The boy 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. Searching the inside, playing and replaying every memory collected in his mind, from every second, 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, he figured. Convincing himself that he had no option.
The boy with no name became a young man, a young man with no name. So many years with no success in searching had not made him defeated. He had never lost hope to one day find his name. He was 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 young man understood even less. The one woman said it was time for her to leave. She had to catch the last train, 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 man, but this day was different, this day was the day after the night with 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 what he asked. “Nothing. There’s nothing written in your eyes”, they said.
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. No words, no letters, nothing written. Then he lowered his voice. Very carefully he whispered to the other young men, knowing that what he was going to say would strike them too hard if it were to be told in any other way than a whisper.
“I want to tell all of you something important and now I will tell all of you this something which is important. But before I tell you this I want to tell you another ting which is even more important.”
“We don‘t want to listen.”
“Did you know there are some notions of the size that if it were possible with words to even give nothing more than the slightest hint of their significance, it would shake the ground beneath our feet as simply as the wind carries a feather?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I have no name.”
“We know.”
“There are no names.”
“Yes there are. We have names. But not you.”
“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, imaginary. Every name, imaginary. Everything having been said, everything being said, everything going to be said, all of it is nothing. Nothing but nothing.”
The other young men tried to understand what the young man with no name had said. They thought about it for a little while. Then they killed him. Then they hid the young man‘s body so that it would never be discovered.
NEW MOON
The sun is warm and once upon the time the sun was warm and then the sun suddenly became very much warmer than before and that is when the following happened. The heat of the rays of the sun was so immense that it made the moon melt. It started out with just a few moondrops but only after a few hours of immensely hot sunshine, the moon began to melt like boiling ice and the moonshine poured down on planet earth.
For one whole night, it rained moonshine and nothing but moonshine. The morning after, when the people awoke, their cities, their villages, their solitude, all of it was covered with moonshine. But the people did not know that it was just a melted moon, nothing dangerous, lying on their streets, fields, hills, forests. This had never before happened. They did not know how to describe it. They did not know what to say. There had never been a need to give a word to something that had never happened and not knowing that it was something that could ever happen. The moonshine looked almost like snow, but more yellow, more glowing, more like the sun.
Most people approached the moonshine carefully, like were they sceptics 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. Nothing happened. The young girl picked some moonshine up from the ground and tasted it. At first, she felt nothing. But after a few minutes, a bright light began to shine from the corner of both of her eyes. The light shone brigther and the brighther became brighter and it didn‘t take long before the people started worrying. Perhaps something terrible could happen, they thought.
“There is nothing to worry about. It feels amazing, almost as if I had wings”, said the girl and shortly thereafter that is exactly what happened, the little girl seemed to have wings, she was no longer in touch with the ground, floating above, floating above ground, shining, bright light, almost as if she were an angel.
“But this girl is no angel. All she did was to eat some of this magic snow”, said the people and went close to crazy from knowing that the moonshine, the magic snow lying there on the ground right in front of them could make them float above ground.
Of course, 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 long for the effect of the moonshine to stop working. But this was of less importance. Even if one could float for just a few seconds, it was still worth it, the hunger for more moonshine was far smaller than the satisfaction after having floated.
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 did not want to try the mysterious snow before it had been thoroughly examined. These people were in nothing less than a hurry with collecting as much as they could of the moonshine, before all of it had been eaten.
As expected, it didn‘t take long before all fallen moonshine had disappeared. That which had been collected by the careful people was all that was left of it. In collaboration with the expertise of modern science, the remainders of the moonshine were put in boxes and sent to a laboratory. “How long before the examination is done?” the people asked the people representing the scientists in matters concerning public relations. “We cannot give you an exact date, but considering that this substance is completely unkown to the scientific society, we find a couple of weeks as a reasonable approximation of the time necessary for the research to be succesful.”
Discontent spread amongst the people. They had expected it would be done quicker than two weeks. At the same time, they realized there was nothing they could do to hasten the process, so they decided to recide from science and headed 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 in the late evening, the people glanced up in admiration towards the stars floating in the heavens. When doing this, they noticed something wasn‘t like it used to. The stars gleamed like they used to, the sun snored like it used to, the darkness darked just like it darked every other night. But where was the moon? Every one of the eveningwalkers looked in every one of the spatial directions, from every corner on earth, but the moon was nowhere to be seen.
Soon, they realized what they had done. They had eaten the only moon they had. The moon was gone. They had floated, yes, but the moon was gone, and this hurt. Sorrow rose from the deepest depths of every conscious mind. All lovers did tears for no longer having a moon beneath which they could kiss. All children did tears for no longer having a man in the moon watching them while they wandered off to dreamland. All the loners did tears for no longer being able to dream of having a moon only for themselves, and absolutely no one else. The elderly did tears for now knowing that their souls would not go to the far side of the moon after 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 an ability to float. The only right thing to do, most of them figured, was to put the remaning moonshine, being examined by the expertise of modern science, back into the vault of nightly heaven, where it came from. And that is what they did. Millions of people gathered to unpack all boxes containing moonshine and to put every single one of the surviving pieces back together again. It was no easy work. The moon would probably not look as beautiful as it once used to, but the people did what they could, and since they could not do more than as good as they could, and since they realized this, their sorrow was slowly but surely being replaced by pride.
After one month of intense labour the people had succeded in assembling every single of the leftover moonshine pieces. It was time to heave it up into the heavens. More people than there are numbers came together to throw up the new moon with enough force for it to break through gravity and find its way back into orbit around our planet.
The people counted. “One. Two.” and on three they threw the moon, the new moon, and the new moon flew and flew and flew further and further away and then it came to a stop and stayed there where it had stopped, far and far away, where it belonged.
When rejoicing was over, the people looked up towards the new moon far, far away. They had built this moon. They had saved this moon. They went smileyed. They knew that they would never again get to taste 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 felt like the moon, floating.
WATCHING TIME
This story is about a skilful watchmaker. So skilful that people from all over the country came to visit him and his village and his workshop. Despite his reputation, business was not as good as one would imagine. Since the watchmaker never made a watch with anything other than highest quality, his services were costly. One of the few people able to afford buying one of his watches was a man from Bigtown, whose massive wealth had been aquired from many years of dealing with diamonds.
One day, the wealthy man made his way from Bigtown to Littlevillage to buy a watch from the skilful watchmaker for his son who soon would be ten. 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.
The wealthy man returned to Bigtown, satisfied of having bought such a beautiful gift for his beautiful son. However, on the evening of the same day, the satisfaction had to make space for discontent. When closely inspecting the watch he could most certainly hear the seconds ticking slower than seconds should be ticking. The time delay was of minuscule dimensions, but nevertheless, it was definitely a time delay, and a time delay, no matter how little, is never of unsignificance, and only the best of the best was best enough for his best son.
Not a minute went to waste when the wealthy man on the following morning set out for the village of the watchmaker. His aim was to complain and the watchmaker listened to the complaints and could not believe what he was hearing. Had he made a watch with seconds ticking slower than seconds should be ticking? He took the watch back into the 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 man from Bigtown. “No. It does not work just fine. It works very poorly. You have until tomorrow to fix it”, and with those words the wealthy man parted.
The mornig after he returned to the watchmaker‘s workshop. “Here you go. The seconds are now ticking impeccably”, said the skilful watchmaker and handed over the watch.
“Now the seconds are ticking too quickly”, claimed the wealthy man. The watchmaker firmly shook his head. “It is ticking just as it should be ticking.” The wealthy man was not in accord. “It is not at all ticking as it should be ticking. Anyone could hear that the ticking is ticking too quickly. 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 man from Bigtown left the workshop to go back to Bigtown, but deep inside he felt the uncontrolability of anger impatiently moving him within, like eggs in boiling water.
In fact, he told himself, he would prefer not to sell the watch at all to a customer who discretited his craft with such condescendence. 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, as had been told. He was given the watch. “Here you go. The seconds are now ticking properly.”
The wealthy man 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. But just to make the customer pleased, he had another look at it. As expected, nothing wrong. “Mister. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this watch. I must even say it is one of the finest watches that I have ever made.” This made the wealthy man angry. 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 and now I am fed up with your abysmal services and I want you to fix this clock right away and then I want this to be delivered to my house in Bigtown before the clock strikes twelve. Is that understood?”
“No”, said the watchmaker. “I will not try to fix a watch which needs not to be fixed. And I will not give you this watch. I will keep this watch. I want to you to leave my workshop and not come back before you have understood who you are and who I am. Here is your money. Now leave my workshop. Leave. Now.”
The wealthy man left, with money, without watch. The watchmaker stayed, without money, with watch, watching time coming and time going, time being born and time disappear, watching time as it is and watching the emptiness of his pockets disappear.
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