The Smile of the Unvanquished

Morning: the sky looks docile and gently blue, almost of a pastel timidity...some mauvish-greyish clouds like celestial pendants to WWI wrecks littered around the temperamental waters of Orkney lay scattered as in a pose of self-introspection... silence governs the air, bushes wave erratically, like a girl possessed by a jolt of mad cheerfulness.... the sun pours a liquid gold veneer over the scenery, covering the world into an autumnal brass.... Ach, it moves on... From the window, draped over a bleak wall cemented unto the distancing horizon, a garguantuan beast of dour and ashen spur, scurried past, dissolving to a faint reminiscence of its former might. AND NOW... a blinding flash of sun light sweeps over the land; a fusion reaction of summerly jollity and horror reigning the isle for a instance till the clouds hold their severe dark gathering once again, and it chucks doon... violent, irresistible lashing rain, swept by the eternal, never abating wailing wind from arctic inspi...

they walk in the morning with hunched bodies in thin supermarket cloths, barely in control of their shivers; their heads full of waning delirium. the frosty air makes them edgy, their movements are floundering, like a broken record idly wheeling past the production of any sound. their blunt eyes and sordid smiles hint on dead souls stamped with the rictus of idiocy. the glory of dawn ignites and shames the waste of consumerist barracks and temples of intoxication, while weeds between cracks, spilled leaves victim to seasonal tides and guardians of lanes revel in melancholic dignity before the bustling writhing traffic sinks them back in the clouded background. now they loiter in rank smut corners of subways, pentices and against lamp posts, at home in wafts of acrid urine, bakkeries of vomit and stacks of variegated dumping, their dialogues unfold in a series of grunts, monosyllables and shouts, interspersed with hoarse laughter. they glean the world with muted...

We all live for the future, but sometimes death puts a stop to it. Perhaps and sometimes it is no different to someone walking along a flower bed but one single flower among that shiny crowd of he deems extraordinarily fascinating and beautiful. He cuts it off the stem and takes it home. There, he fills a glass, puts this flower in it, flower and glass goes on the kitchen window. There is more than a good chance that flower survives her natural life span. Or he puts it to dry between the pages of an old nature book, which is handed over from generation to generation ... Maybe there's an analogy for man and woman, this homecoming in spite of being stripped from its roots of life, and we call that special reserved place beyond the horizon, Eternity . Thus, whom to mourn if true, the living or the deceased?

They met one another in some indescriptive place soaked wet by torrential rains and blinded by a dense mist that sucked not just their vision, but their strength and breath. Sweat mingled with the rank odours from muddy pools and there was the sound of carcasses around gnawed and ripped apart by maggots and other vulterine beasts and the air filled with their ghastly sounds and stench. Both men had no desire but to escape from this internecine no-man's land but each of them stood in the other's way. They spoke different languages but fears, hopes and moods were brotherly alike. Tongues wouldn't move. Eyes locked on one another. Long, intense, first mostly insecure and irked, gradually more apprehensively and with mutual respect. In slow harmony they made a step aside to let the other through. And while the men continued their tracks, throats cleared up to speak, smiles were exchanged, wishing the best and hoping to meet one another again in more felicitous circumstanc...