vier_seizoenen geest en lichaam he felt panicked. reaching forth to a twisted wooden beam above his hand, he gripped it with all his might like a child hanging from the smooth, round steel of a monkeybar in a playground lest he fall and embarrass himself in front of the gushing girls. his aching legs were trembling and threatening to cramp. they stood, muscles clenched, on the narrow 2x4 joist of the attic which seemed to be the only perch left of the crumbling house he suddenly found himself in, waking as it were from one world of relative ease to another full of danger and mystery. it was hard to say what had destroyed the victorian house with its crumpled stucco walls, plankboard ceilings, persian rugs, and louis xvi furniture. the corpse of a dead animal hung on a hook over a doorway like artist hope atherton's exhibit entitled "howl." still, he clung exhaustedly to his life like a bird in a tempest, realizing if he should somehow let go, he would fall into the turbulent ocean. it was in the course of his dilemma that he discovered that the house, in its day, had been built upon the rocky foundation of a heather infused cliff over the sea. even as he hung, he remembered his need to be at the water. there was a reason. a purpose. a plan. his life was not his own. he was a piece. a part of the workings. a spoke in the wheel. a puppet in the play. a dancing marionette. he watched a drop of his sweat release itself from the corrugated lines of his forehead and fall, catching his reflection in a shattered mirror in front of him, hanging askew on a nail that had reached a petrified stud. the cracked visage divided his face into a hundred separate images. he gazed at himself and somehow it seemed his appearance was not how he remembered. perhaps he was older. his grey-flecked hair was growing out from a summer buzz cut. he was unshaven for three days. his teeth ached with a growing cavity. and then it happened. all of his strength left him like a lover who lets go. he fell, like a shooting star, a pear from a tree, a pelican into the wine-dark sea. 050907 ... geest en lichaam the fall was not far and he could swim, but the problem was he hit his head on a black iron gate post right before he entered the water. the blunt force did not knock him unconscious, but it did slice open a two inch gash upon his right cheek that bled immediately, clouding the area around him with a red swirl. how beautiful that looks he thought because the afternoon sun was shining, breaking the surface and illuminating his blood so that the red and blue combination formed a purple the color of a morning glory flower blooming where no one had planted it. however, his fascination was short-lived considering a shark, smelling his iron rich infusion, approached. he saw it and it took his breath away, like the fear that one dreads most in all the world. he felt the need to rise to the surface for air for if there was something he could do it was that and he panicked again, realizing that he was nothing more than food. i guess we never know how we will die, he thought, until we die. and he waited for the shark to eat him, treading water, his face wound stinging and bleeding, looking up to the crumpled house on the edge of the cliff that he had just fallen from. 050908 ... geest en lichaam when the shark took its first bite, it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. the razorsharp teeth completely severed his right leg at the thigh, ripping it away from his body, a branch from a tree. fortunately, the shock that enveloped his body, a merciful response form a brain unable and unwilling to accept and process the unspeakably tragic event, prevented him from feeling anything. instead he continued to tread water furiously in an automatic, almost instinctual attempt to survive, as if he still had two legs, even though he watched with detached bemusement as the shark shook and devoured the one he used to have. he saw his doc marten boot bob on the surface of the water, foamed with the red of his blood, pouring forth like a garden hose from his severed femoral artery. he gazed at his jagged fibula and the ripped achilles tendon sticking out of it, the shoestrings still tied. as if it was but an appetizer, the ravenous shark gulped, swallowed, and then immediately chomped down on his left shoulder, easily tearing his arm away, humerus bone from the scapula, with no more effort than a child pulling wispy cotton candy from its paper cone. he watched his hand flapping back and forth as if it was waving goodbye. he tried to remain buoyant, but could only slap at the water, like someone who never learned to swim. he sunk for a moment and swallowed the salty sea water. it choked him, and he coughed, realizing he was drowning, and so he pushed with his one leg and came back up, only to find that the shark's mouth was enclosing his head, like someone somewhere had turned out the lights. darkness had come. and all his days were over. 050909 ... geest en lichaam he felt a tugging, like when a gardener pulls a carrot from the giving earth and his eyes, the windows that allow in light, opened wide. that's when his spirit was yanked away from his body. a god with calloused hands pulled it from him. violently. for a few brief moments, his spirit hung in the salty sea air like a butterfly, or a kite, or a balloon. a bird that did not flap its wings. he still possessed cognizance and navel gazed to where the shark was chewing away at his former shell. he saw the glistening, twisted rope of his sausage-like intestines strewn in the water like an ingredient in a ghoulish cioppino. he saw his brain spilling out of the side of his head like playdoh squeezed out of its toy press. his eyes were marbles hanging from strings. his nose hung like a bagworm nest from a drought-ravaged arborvitae. one finger remained on his right hand. the middle. too late to say fuck you to a shark, he thought. he heard then, as it were, a sound coming from around the bend in the cove where he had fallen into the ocean. it was music, a light tinkling of a toy piano playing a sprightly tune, not unlike an ice cream truck slowly cruising a residential neighbourhood, calling children to indulge and spring for in indulgence of their cool treats on that hot summer day. it turned out to be a replica of noah's ark, yet much smaller, and instead of plain wood it was painted every color and was embellished with words, sayings, quotes, messages. one caught his attention and before his spirit left the world, attracted as it was to a warm light beckoning it like a mother calling her young son to dinner, he read it. it was from a pablo neruda poem and it became his epitaph for his burial at sea. "I AM THE FURIOUS BIRD OF THE CALM STORM" 050910 ... geest en lichaam the slow, drifting approach of the ark seemed to startle the shark as it langourously dined. it dove beneath the water's surface still stained bright red with blood, carrying a rope of intestines in its clenched mouth. the shark's tail made a sharp, slapping sound as if it was angry for the intrusion. only the head of the corpse remained, bobbing like an apple at a halloween party and perhaps it was saving it for last. dessert maybe? capogiro leaned over the railing of the boat. she saw the severed head, the oozing brain, the popped eyeballs. yet there was enough of the face in tact for her to recognize who it was. all her fears were realized with this, sudden, reluctant acknowledgement. "oh my god!" she shouted, both hands covering her eyes. "it is sunil-rillian." jetzt-crowl stood next to her and then placed his arms around her in a sincere act of comfort. he swallowed hard. even he was shaken to the core of his understanding, thinking they had come so far and now that they had finally arrived at the sea where the egg lay in wait, the impossible had turned itself inside out. "what do we do now?" she said, beginning to sob. she was thinking of their journey to find the egg. jetzt-crowl had many intricate and involved answers for her that would have taken days to fully explain, but he was a sensitive crowl and what he told her was simple and what she needed to hear in this time of shock, disbelief, and acceptance. "sunil-rillian's spirit is returning to its place of origin and when it arrives and sufficiently reunites with its creator it will go forth again, placed inside a new womb, just as a plant dies and in the spring is resurrected." capogiro's eyes burned hot. her nose was stuffed with sorrow. she buried her cat fur cheek into the soft feathers of jetzt-crowl's bird face. slowly she pulled away and gazed into the perilous beauty of his hawk-like eyes. they were both eternal beings that relied on the impermanent mortal beings like the sun needs a plant to provide for, or a parent needs a child. "why didn't you save him this time?" "it was his time to die. and when we discover where his spirit will live on and he grows to manhood, then we will tell him who he is, what he has to do, and then we continue our search for the egg." they both looked at the red water in silence. finally, jetzt-crowl could not hold back his tears any longer and they erupted from him in a burst of unleashed emotion dropping into the sea like rain from a sad god. 050911 ... cr0wl click on the name, geest en lichaam, and then read from the bottom to the top. 100411 ... PeeT four seasons spring neues_leben summer sweet fields fall fruit winter destruction 120519 ... nyni strange how thematic our lives become. 130213 what's it to you? who go blather from