Excuse me for sounding a litlle bitter today, but that selflessness of mine got me falling down yesterday night. I definitely should give up bad habits.
I'm a blogger in crisis and I'm terrible company right now.
Say it's sad staying up late just for this.
Say I don't know if it's really worth the effort.
Say I'm a bit sick and tired of playing the tough and lone writer.
Say I can almost hear my echo in the net.
Someone asked me yesterday when I was online if I was a bot (how stupid can you get? Do I look or sound like a bot? That was the straw that broke the camel's back).
Bjork - Human behavior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn6nqd-nCko
So it's bye for now to forgetful associate professors, bored lecturers, stressed consultants, dull clerks, tiresome computer freaks, suffocating Army of Newbies, missing Dutch male nurses, careless saber warriors, absent minded roleplayers, overwhelming lifestylers and hateful SL paperback editors of mine, 'cos I quit here for the moment.
Beck - Looser
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJN3PGqDRNg
You can find below the second part of Wilma's. She will be entertaining you for a few minutes, while i slide back to regular mode, to continue doing the usual things, in my usual shape. I'm taking some days, weeks, maybe months off. I don't know.
See you some day, but i don't know exactly when. :((
Supertramp - Goodbye stranger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZOSYrsgMJI
MY NAME IS WILMA (Passage II and last)
"2nd February
... That night, in my dreams I saw a drama film in which a romantic, well-spoken psychopath, with a huge smile on his face, convinced me to stab myself to death.
I was tormented by the idea that there were unspecified, unknown presences capable of blithely hatching the most horrible crimes ... just beside me, who had set time bombs in motion which they could trigger at any moment.
It was torture for me not to know who the apprentice poet was who was breathing the same warm air as me, without letting himself be known. I only knew how to defend myself by making sure that no one noticed me.
I was as impatient as a child on Christmas Eve and got up three times to see if there was a reply to my message, but it was obviously not yet the moment. My brain cells out of sync and incapable of composing a daily melody, I decided to calm down and go out to have a curative cup of coffee which would give some respite to my nervousness. Perhaps my personage needed a truce in order to move.
Alfonso, the man who never missed anything, was glued to the counter at the bar, near the only free place. It had been written that it was our destiny to fraternize with each other, at all costs.
- Well, Emma, how are you?
- Okay ... here ... having breakfast.
He was a talkative fellow, who obviously shook off the dust and spider’s web of loneliness here.
When I had finished my coffee, my steps took me back to the sixth floor quickly. I headed straight to the shelf where “The man who sold his shadow” was kept and took it down for the fourth time that morning. I flipped through the pages and on page 34 found another note written in blue ink, where the following could be read:
"My angel, you walk past me every morning without even seeing me while I die of sadness: it is I who watches you, waits for you ... in despair. Don’t tire me out with questions. I don’t have any answers for you now.”
Three sentences which dragged me onto an unknown terrain, where I was playing at a disadvantage. But my imagination flew freely and whatever I did to drown the feeling, a hint of a wisp of excitement kept me going.
I put the book back in its place and made my way back to my seat. Repeating again and again those inspired lines, I kept banging on at my intuition. The scales would be balanced if an unscrupulous character got into one of them and made fun of me. But that was the least of the ills which could befall me ...
Everyone I came across was a potential suspect.
Doctor Fat looked quizzically at me over his glasses. It couldn’t be him, because if it were, the correspondence would lose all its magic immediately and become just a monologue.
Two tables further on, there was a rowdy group of law students who had occupied an entire table so that they could catch up with their notes ... and the notes had kindly accepted to be shared out and emigrate to new and more interesting files.
The boy with the “funnies” had accumulated a pile of books by Roald Dahl around him, all in a muddle, but just then was playing at minesweeper on his computer. He got annoyed when he lost and silently expressed exaggerated frustration at an imaginary opponent. He had his feet on a chair on which he had hung his motorcycle helmet. His huge boots were dirty. He realised that I was watching him, stopped playing and looked up.
- What are you gaping at?, he asked.
Taken aback by his cheek, I took a few seconds to react.
- Uh .. well, nothing, I was just watching how you played.
Upset by the huge remonstration, I moved away from him towards my seat. Obviously, wanting to make things all right, he got up and came over to me.
- My name’s David, he said. I am revising for an English literature exam. The last, I hope.
I said hello with a scowl on my face, ready to receive the same treatment I had given him, but he shook my right hand warmly. I received a whiff of his mint-scented breath, like a gust of wind. I sat there, open mouthed, not knowing what to do, whether to laugh or – perhaps – yell ... until he made fun of me, imitating my surprise. I tried to retrieve my hand from his, but he held it tightly. All of a sudden, he let go of it gently. Then, he turned on his heels, returned to his seat and went on with his computer games.
Without taking his eyes off the screen, he said:
- You still haven’t told me what your name is.
- Do I have to tell you?
- I’ve told you mine. We’re neighbours, aren’t we?
- My name is Emma.
- And what are you doing here, Emma?
- I am working on a university thesis.
He took his feet off the chair, stopped playing and said:
- Look here, talking to you is very tiring, you know. One has to draw information out of you with a corkscrew. What’s your thesis about?
- Censorship on children’s literature.
- It sounds interesting. I hope I can read it one day.
I did not answer. Our short dialogue had not been blessed by chemical attraction. In that case, it is better to withdraw. The situation was getting beyond me.
Doctor Fat hissed for us to keep quiet “for once and bloody all”. Buried in his books on forensic medicine, he did not want to lose his concentration. The mathematics neighbour looked up. Her accounts were not squaring up, nor were her equations working out.
I returned to my incontinent megabyte mouse. Although he was cheeky, it was time to pluck up the courage not to let the half-melted ice melt again.
- What game are you playing?, I asked him
- Well … it depends on the moment. Second Life, Tomb Raider .. Wolfenstein … Today I am feeling rather weak and feeble so I am resigning myself to the humble minesweeper, he replied without taking his eyes off the screen.
He sat up, looked at me in the eyes and asked me:
- And you, what games do you play?
- I don’t play games.
- Oh, how boring.
- I don’t play here.
- Well, how boring you are here.
- I am going to get on with my work.
- All right, don’t talk to me if you don’t want to. By the way, with those glasses, you look like Wilma, the Wilma in Scooby Doo.
That fellow floated about elegantly in as much space as the limbo of his demented mental state allowed. He thought he was very funny and simply superior to mere mortals, thanks to his spaced out witticisms and outlandish sense of humour, which had selected me as the favourite butt for his jokes.
The skin-head girl watched us from her far off post and made a sign to us to keep quiet. I turned around and went back to my seat to put a distance between myself and the impertinent internet-game player. It was going to be hard being in the same room and even more so seated at the same table. The afternoon had turned sour and I decided to pick up my books and leave.
I retraced my steps to the entrance, when I arrived at the reception desk Alfonso signalled to me.
- Emma, someone has left this envelope for you. A young lad brought it just a minute ago.
- A young boy?
- Yes, he brought it to me and then scampered off. Your name is here. Is it important? I was going to put it through the scanner.
- I don’t think you’ll have to.
- So, it’s good news?
I turned my back on him trying to find some form of intimacy in which to open the envelope. There was another napkin from a bar on which was written in blue ink:
"I forgot to say that I shall be waiting for your answer in "Ars advinatoria " by Marshall Wanamaker.”
The lift doors opened and a throng of students poured out of it in a rush. From the back, emerged Doctor Fat, as solemn as if he were in a funeral procession, and my impertinent friend, armed with his helmet and a new battery of joke missiles.
- Well, there ... you were waiting for me. But if you want me to take you for a ride on my motorbike, it just can’t be. Forgive me for my honesty, I love your curvaceous figure, but today I have to go.
- I am sorry to interrupt you and even more so disappoint you: I wasn’t waiting for you. I was talking to Alfonso.
- And what’s Alfonso got that I haven’t?
- Well, he is rather more agreeable and much less discourteous than you are.
- I’m sure he is. Remind me to give myself ten whip lashes in your honour tonight. I might even turn into a gentleman. Now, sorry, but I am in a hurry. ‘Bye, Wilma!
A faint protest rumbled in my skull and I shouted after him, not very convincingly: “My name isn’t Wilma!”, but it was the wrong time, because he had gone and did not hear me.
Night had fallen. I walked towards the entrance to the metro, where its darkness engulfed me and its tunnels took me back to the peace and quiet of my flat.
3rd February
How strange that in the era of the internet someone should remain stuck in prehistory, insisting on hiding messages in exotic books in a library. I thought that perhaps we could cease chasing each other around and I would proffer him my e-mail address, inviting him to a virtual meeting on the web.
I wrote out my message at home. When I arrived at the library I put my things on the desk so that I could rush off and locate “Ars advinatoria”, which I didn’t know where to find, and hide my note in it.
It was half past eight. The law students had already occupied their table and were studiously applying themselves to their work. My companion the lout had arrived too
- How are you Wilma? Did you dream about me last night?
- No. I didn’t dream about you last night.
- I don’t know if I can bear it.
- And my name is not Wilma.
- Are you cross about yesterday? If you want, I’ll give you a whirl on my motorbike this afternoon.
- No! Certainly not! I don’t want to go for a whirl on your motorbike! All I want is for you to shut up!!!!!
- Shit! What a character! I love it.
I felt like hitting him so hard that he became unconscious, but I ignored him. I picked up my note and left the room to try my luck in the infinite number of rows of bookshelves packed with books from floor to ceiling. “Ars advinatoria” would be somewhere amongst them.
I looked along all the alphabetical rows of bookshelves, to no avail, unable to make head of tail of the order, racing from finish to start, like an athlete going the wrong way, back to start again. I went to the section of the occult, but couldn’t find it there either. I had no other alternative than to arm myself with courage and ask the librarian.
- I need to find “Ars advinatoria” by Marshall Wanamaker.
Frowning at me, she consulted the computer.
- Row F, Bookshelf no. 22, left hand side. If you want to borrow it, you’ll have to fill in these forms, ... she pointed to them.
- No, ... no, I just want to see something in it. Then I’ll put it back. Thank you very much.
Row F, … no. 22, left hand side. I had to climb up a ladder to reach the shelf, which was about two and a half metres from the ground ... high for someone like me who is much shorter than the national average. There, hiding between two books on black magic, was “Ars advinatoria”. I slipped my message in on the page which described murder through imagination and its practice, reading through the muscles and deactivating the sixth sense. Frankly, it was all a bit scary.
While I was coming down the ladder, having great difficulty overcoming the atrocious dizziness I feel with heights, Doctor Fat came to my rescue, apparently concerned about me.
- Please let me help you.
- Thank you very much ... I don’t much like getting down.
- This ladder is very high ... you could fall. Don’t look down.
The Doctor’s behaviour surprised me by his behaviour and kindly intentions. Until then, I had considered him as a solitary and cantankerous old misogynist. But, I quickly removed my hand from his sweaty grasp. I did not like the feel of his skin.
- My name is Daniel.
- I am Emma, delighted to meet you and thank you for helping me.
- It was a pleasure, Emma.
From their table, the four law students were watching the scene but when they realised that I had noticed, they took their eyes off us. I went back to my seat, next to the lout who had watched our movements unblinkingly. Scratching the lobe of his ear, he asked:
- Tell me something, Wilma, what were you doing up there, playing Spiderman?
- It’s none of your business.
- Haven’t you been told not to talk to strangers?
- He isn’t a stranger.
- Why do you talk to anyone rather than me?
- Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.
- Because I’m your neighbour at the table, I’m not a stranger.
- But it is precisely with you that I don’t want to talk.
- All right, you win. I won’t talk to you any more, not even if you beg me to on bended knees.
The lout kept quiet for an hour, during which I enjoyed total silence and managed to concentrate on writing some of the best pages of my thesis, until the computer beeped at me that I had received an e-mail.
The message was from an unknown address.
"Thank you, my dear, for trusting me, but I prefer my letters written in blue ink to repose in the pages of the books I love, instead of wandering about the virtual world. I may be whoever you want me to be, admiring you silently, waiting for a word from your lips, he who looks for you without finding you. Get out of this absurdly silly box of technology, forget about electronic mail and talk to me in the pages of Tennyson’s "Merlin and Vivian"".
I was going to have to resign myself to going up ladders to reach the most out-of-reach books in the room. The lout was watching me surreptitiously, which introduced a major factor of unease every time he lifted his gaze over the top of his laptop screen. He was writing away unceasingly, particularly since I had told him to shut up. Occasionally, he looked up and stared about in all directions, focusing a few seconds on indeterminate objects or people and then began to write again.
His long hair almost hid his face and he had not shaved that morning. He was wearing a woollen sweater of some non-descript colour which nearly reached his knees. His trousers were too tatty, too wide and too full of pockets, which no doubt hid a ton of mysterious objects. His mobile telephone was on the table and kept receiving messages, to which he replied immediately.
He was an odd fellow. Deep down, I was beginning to feel a strange kind of affection for him which I would not know how to describe. Taking advantage of his silence, I continued writing, now free of distractions. When I finished the chapter for the day, I closed my eyes, lent back in the chair and took in a few deep breaths.
I was woken from that minute of peace by the sound of a wooden box being pushed towards me on the table. I looked at the lout inquisitively.
- Before you go home, give grandpa a kiss.
- You don’t have much respect for your grandfather if you hurl him at me as if he were a glass of whisky being thrust along the counter of a bar.
The box was a cigar case and the joke was that it looked like an urn for storing the ashes of the dead. He stood up, opened the lid and then I saw two rows of cigars.
- Let’s smoke a peace pipe, Wilma. I don’t like fighting with you.
- I don’t smoke.
- Why do you always reject my well-intentioned suggestions?
- Because I never know if you are serious or if you are making fun of me.
- I know that I am a bit of a clown, but I’ll never make fun of you. Can we make peace?
- All right, let’s make peace.
Happy and relieved, he gave me a hug and went back to his seat.
I had forgotten that I had another book to find: “Merlin and Vivian” by Tennyson. It would give me some exercise ... stretch my legs.
I found it in alphabetical order on a row of bookshelves which was rather far away. Fearlessly, I climbed up the ladder so that I could reach the top shelves. In the distance I saw the doctor approaching. When I found the book, we repeated the same procedure we had gone through in the morning.
- Good afternoon, Emma.
- Good afternoon, Daniel.
- Shall I help you get down?
- Yes please ... thank you.
- Oh, “Merlin and Vivian”, one of my favourite works. Do you like classical literature?
- I don’t read much.
- You’re wrong not to … books are our friends and it’s a relationship we should cultivate. Be careful with the last rung. There you are.
I had the book in my left hand. Daniel was holding my right hand, then he tightened his grip on me and pulled me towards him. He had gone red in the face. I tried to free myself, but he would not let me go. We struggled. The book fell on the floor.
I tried to shout, but he put his hand over my mouth immediately so no one heard me. I bit his hand but he grabbed my jaw to prevent me from doing so again. He pushed me towards a small, almost hidden, door at the end of the row of books. No one saw us. He opened it and we went into a small storeroom under the staircase. Everything was covered in dust and spider’s webs ... probably, no one had been in it for months.
I yelled as loud as I could, but he hit me across the face so hard that he knocked me out.
When I came round and opened my eyes, my hands and feet were tied and I was gagged. Daniel was sitting staring at me, a case of surgeon’s instruments open on his lap. I could see scalpels shining in it. He was lovingly running his fingers along the blade of one of them.
- I am very sorry to have hurt you, but I didn’t have any other choice.
My nose had dry blood on it; I had a huge cut on my upper lip and my face was swollen because of the blow. I was not sure whether this was all a dreadful nightmare and I would wake up in a few moments, or if the terrifying story was actually happening.
- Emma, dear, wake up now and bid farewell to this cruel world. Life is only a dream, but death is freedom ... as they tell us in religion: dust we are and to dust we shall return. You will meet the spirits who people our legends ... you will be one of them in your own right. What is sad is that it is impossible to return from that world, but why would you want to come back to this planet filled with such wickedness?
I could not believe that it had been him.
- I know that you despise me and it seems unbelievable to you that I am the person who wrote you those charming messages. I’m right, aren’t I?
He took my face in his hands and, looking me in the eyes, said:
- Why did it not occur to you that it was me? Well, don’t underestimate me, my dear, or play games with me. I’m as good a poet as the best. But you pretty girls are all waiting for a prince charming, not someone like me. Anyway, we are not going to play any more games. It will take me only a few minutes to draw a lovely ruby necklace on your neck with this sharp blade and you will be gone forever. That way, we shall wipe out all ill feelings and I shall honour your memory, which will remain with me forever.
Scared out of my wits, I tugged the gag off my mouth with my two hands and screamed as loud as I could, stretching my vocal cords to their limits with all the strength my lungs could muster. I screamed with terror. I screamed until I became hoarse. I screamed in despair ... until I realised that no one would find me in that horrid little room hidden away beyond the library, and when they did, in many months’ time, or even years, they would find me dead like an abandoned dog.
My chest was fit to burst. My heart was beating overtime, bouncing about in my rib cage, banging against its walls, leaping about in all directions, in an attempt to escape. Silence had fallen on that concrete hole ... the only sound to be heard was my breath. My blouse was soaked with sweat. My fear was tremendous ... unbearable. I began to shake uncontrollably. Even my shoe laces trembled ... my earrings ... the buckle on my belt.
I thought my end had come, that I would never see my family or friends again, that I had not really had time to make any of my dreams come true, that no one would remember my passage in this life, that, after a few minutes of intense pain, I would go out like a candle in the wind, in the presence only of my assassin, just to disappear into total obscurity forever and ever.
Panic stricken, I burst into tears. Losing all hope of anyone finding me and terrified, I prayed that my death would be quick.
Daniel piled up a number of boxes around me so that I was shut in a four-storey cardboard prison. Then I heard him open the door, I supposed that he checked to see if anyone was about ...
- Don’t misbehave, my dear. Wait for me, I won’t be long. Then it will all happen.
He left me alone in the dark. Hours went by. I am not sure how many ... perhaps two or three.
My stomach was an empty sack but no longer claimed its daily ration of food. The air I had difficulty drawing into my lungs entered feebly and when I breathed it out into the atmosphere it took with it a part of my soul, which was fearful about becoming separated definitively from my body.
I was beginning to lose all sense of time but not of the minute space I was enclosed in, when Daniel came back into that hidden away room.
- Here I am, back again. Did you miss me? I think that we are ready to begin. Give some thoughts ... your last ... to your loved ones. And now, resign yourself and prepare your mind for the flight to infinity.
He removed one of the walls of boxes and sat down in front of me. In his right hand he brandished the scalpel which he had been caressing before.
- It will hardly hurt at all ... don’t be frightened.
I wriggled about nervously ... and knocked down the boxes. The ones at the top crashed down making a terrible din. Some of them landed on Daniel’s head, his chest ... furious, he shouted:
- Bitch, it’s going to be all the same! I’ll finish you off anyway!!
Then, I heard voices outside and a strong blow on the door, which fell off its hinges, collapsing inwards. Six men rushed in making a tremendous racket. One of them was Alfonso, the security guard, another was the lout with the “funnies”, and the others, the four law students ... all six were all armed. They threw themselves at Daniel, immobilising him.
Someone yelled: “Police!”. I couldn’t understand what was going on.
One of the students was putting handcuffs on Daniel while Alfonso read him his rights. They all had gleaming badges in easily visible places: on a pocket or on the belt of their trousers. Those badges hung like gold medallions.
Daniel was standing in a corner of the room, humiliated, looking contemptible, totally deprived of arrogant madness, his hands and feet bound.
The lout came and untied me. I was crying disconsolately. Fear flowed out of the pores of my body leaving room for the nervous exhaustion which gradually crept into every cell.
- Are you all right, Wilma?
- Yes.
- We’re taking you to hospital so that they can give you a full check-over. You’ve got a very bad cut on your mouth. Did he do anything to you?
- He gave me a terrible blow ... he wanted to cut my throat with a scalpel.
- It’s all over now. A psychologist will have to see you. Come on, let’s get out of here ... the Scientific Police has to come and we are not allowed to touch anything.
- But … you are ..?
- I am not studying English. I am a police detective. We have been watching that fellow for months … He is alleged to have killed two young women.
We walked out of the reading room, which had been cleared. A deathly silence reigned in the empty rows of bookshelves, as if they had been expecting a major drama.
Alfonso and the lout took me to the nearest hospital in a police car, whereas Daniel went to prison in a police van, under escort by the law students.
My physical injuries healed in a couple of weeks, but anxiety came to live with me. The therapist advised me to go back to the library at No. 5 Liberty Street to reconcile myself with the place, but I have not been able to do so. The memory of that day has become a dormant illness hidden in the depths of my mind, in repose amongst millions of layers of cells likely to trigger minuscule electric impulses at any moment.
Anyway, a few days ago, with a will of iron and a spine of stainless steel, I beat all my rivals and qualified as an English teacher.
David, the lout with the “funnies” and the police detective in real life gave me a few days of grace in which to recover, then hastened to reassure me by e-mail that he was still alive:
“How are you, Wilma? I am no longer the long-haired yob you met. The police superintendent forced to me cut my hair and although you won’t believe it I’m squeaky clean and super strong. I wonder if you would like to go for a whirl on my motorbike, have a bit of a chat, and stir up my grandpa’s ashes with me. Yours, affectionately, David.”
That day I smiled for the first time in many weeks.
I still call myself Wilma, and I have yet to lose myself in dense forests in far away places, swim in deep blue seas washing in on deserted beaches, climb the highest mountains or go down the deepest craters on the moon. But I won’t go there alone."
.jpg)
