Manoukian, Author at The Pure Life of Dreams

March 21, 2024June 7, 2024

King Minos and the Showgirls

A tall thin man with dark hair and a blue apron stood on the steps of the lecture hall.

“I’m Minos,” he said, “Do you have a token?”

“No, I don’t, King Minos,” I replied.

“Well you need one to go there,” and he pointed further down the steps towards a blue hospitality tent.

So that was where the Tibetan woman had gone to, I thought. She had joined me at the back of the lecture hall just as the math professor was wrapping up. (And despite the many spaces available, she’d picked the seat next to mine, on the back wall of the hall.)

The Tibetan woman felt very close. Her white feather boa had brushed my face as she sat down. She was heavily made up, and even though we both faced forwards I could see that she wore fake black eyelashes; she also wore a red and black patterned tunic that I assumed was Tibetan.

I had just gotten back from the bathroom a second time, and had seeked out a space at the top of the stairs, squeezing further along the row, past two lanky young black men who’d spread themselves across the closer seats. I saw that the seats beyond the men were different, they had burnished gold seat cushions, they were wider and they looked comfortable enough so I chose the furthest along the row.

I’d had to go back to the bathroom after realizing that I was without my trousers and my jacket. Yes, I had been walking around with just my socks, shirt and boxers! And I realized that, though I had made a point of being early for the lecture, instead I was late; and now it would be worse for having to return to the bathroom to fetch the jacket and trousers.

Missing so much of the lecture I realized, wouldn’t impress the girl with the pulled back blonde ponytail, neither would the ‘walking around without my trousers on’ part.

Later, when I saw the ponytail woman on the steps, leaving the lecture hall, she looked quite blanched, her face almost as white as her hair. I realized then, that she was quite plain, with her books tucked like babies in her arms.

Before the class had begun I’d gone to the bathroom to take a poo, and although the water level was up to the rim of the bowl, and although I was guaranteed to get my bum wet, there was lots of paper and the bathroom itself was quite clean.

The poo, as well, came out cleanly, one small black pearl-drop, and I was able to wipe myself quickly. Even so, I’d missed the start of the lecture, and with it being the first lecture of the semester, the best chance to make an impression was gone.

When I returned to the toilet to get my trousers, I wondered whether to return to the hall again, but I figured I would not be noticed if I took the side steps to the back.

Indeed no one noticed me except for the ponytail woman who glanced over, and, of course, the black men I’d passed when trying find a new seat.

The students dispersed quite quickly once the lecture had finished, so did the Tibetan woman. And that was when I encountered Minos.

Minos pulled out a token for me and said. “Or you could visit the showgirls instead.” He gave me a sly wink, or at least, that was what I thought he did.

He held up a simple drawing on a large piece of paper. It had a pencil line across the bottom representing the floor, and on the right side of the page, on two pencil line steps, stood two shadowy figures, their smudged shading knee-length skirts hugging their hips, their faces obscured.

The figures stood poised outside the outline of a door.

An exercise in reverse chronological order.
Photo of the ladies at the court of King Minos’ Palace of Knossos by Tony Hammond via Flickr.

March 16, 2024March 16, 2024

Choreography in a Cave

I was out cycling with Liam in the old country. Large mock Tudor buildings surrounded cobble stone streets as we passed through the village. I was ahead of him on my little red bicycle, it was one of those commuter bikes with the small wheels, and I passed under an old stone arch into an open grassy forecourt on a bright sunny day, then cycled across a pebbled path.

I bore right, next, into a cavernous hall hewn from rock.

I wasn’t sure bikes were allowed in the cave but I continued along the right side of the hall and held to a rough hewn wall. The wall was smoothed down with age. It shone under the glare of a limpid pool in the center of the hall.

Because of the pool, there was a beautiful light that reflected around the hall.

Then I continued along the path by the side of the pool, even though it was bumpy and difficult to ride on, the way it blended and sloped upwards, melding into the wall; the way it narrowed until the path was no more than a foot wide between wall and water.

I got off my bike – I suspected that a superintendent would tell me off, “No bikes allowed” – and I continued on foot, walking the bike to the end of the hall, where the path turned sharply left along the far side of the pool. The path there was wider, some six feet wide.

Before the turn I had passed a darkened alcove inset into the corner of the cave, so I decided to return my bike to the alcove’s entrance, prop it there so that it leant against the wall just where the entrance began. Then I stepped back onto the wide path at the end of the pool.

The path ended abruptly, at the furthest corner of the pool.

As I looked across the water, children of various ages, started to pile in. They were walking along the path and lining up along the length of the pool. It must be half term, I thought, a lousy time of the year to visit.

Girls in dark gold leotards leapt into the pool. The sun reflecting behind them cast flecks of shimmering light around their poised leaps. They held their arms aloft in a V shape and held their legs astride as, from either side of the pool, they leapt into the water with choreographed jumps.

I held my phone up to take pictures, marvelous pictures that freeze framed their postures as they flew through the air.

One girl twisted in the air in stunning angled poses, her legs and arms bent one way in one shot, bent the other way in the next, frozen in a burnished spangled gold cape. I could not believe my luck.

Then another older team, adult women this time, in bright blue leotards jumped as well, and I held the shutter down so that the camera turned into video mode, capturing their choreographic beauty.

I walked back to the bike where Liam was hanging out. He was sitting on a naturally formed ledge to the right of the bike. I hadn’t noticed the ledge before. A superintendent was there, talking.

Liam held up his right thumb for him and it looked unusually large and wide. The superintendent pulled slightly at the tear in Liam’s thumbnail.

The nail was indeed long and broken enough to snag it badly should he not cut it.

“You need to get rid of it,” the superintendent said, “before you hurt one of the kids.”

The nail was snagged at the left side but as Liam pressed down on it I saw that the nail had more holes above the cuticle, holes that laced the surface like a torn stocking.

“Let’s cut it,” I said to him, “otherwise, if you snag it, you won’t have a fingernail.”

Then Liam stood up and from the pool his face was cast in a beatific light.

Photo by Oxalis Adventure via Flickr.

March 7, 2024March 20, 2024

A Guest House in Alexandria

After the long walk along the Nile I arrived at the hostel. An old man, in a white jellaba led me through a warren of rooms. He had a greying beard and was a little portly. “There is a place,” he assured me, “only one pound.” The Egyptian pound was pegged one to one with the British pound in those days. Still, it was very cheap.

I just didn’t remember coming here before visiting Uncle Vartan.

February 29, 2024April 7, 2024

The Mouth of an Actress

Her hair is short straight, dirty blonde, and combed back exposing a pale white forehead. An actress she is; her right cheek is close to the camera, angled up at her from below, showing the sharp line of her jaw.

On the tip of her nose, there glistens a single tear drop, hanging.

February 22, 2024February 22, 2024

Inappropriate Reading

In the children’s section of a bookstore all is colored in fuzzy shades of pale yellow, the floors, the chairs, the walls, even the bookshelves and the books.

On the next to top shelf of the center display, where the latest books are advertised, there is a new book with the title “The Cocks and Cuns of Despair”.