The Pure Life of Dreams

October 13, 2025October 14, 2025

The Norwegians and the Gummies Shaped Like Toilets

The next toilet I found was much better. It was in the gender neutral section with the orange doors.

A woman came out and gave me a funny look, like I shouldn’t be there, but the markings on the doors showed the symbol of a man and next to the symbol it was marked ‘Malo’.

I double checked. Then I went in.

The stall had a large glass window which opened out onto the gallery’s exhibit rooms but it didn’t bother me because of the stall’s cleanliness. The seat had paper that would flush away automatically once you used it. There was some paper on the floor but it was better than the previous toilet where I had to use a whole roll to wipe away the spilled water that was everywhere. I’d given up on that toilet which was why I found myself here.

I was conscious of not having seen any of the exhibition of drawings but I sat down instead and squeezed my buttocks. Only nothing came out. I couldn’t go. I stood up to wash my hands and saw that the soaps were gummies shaped like toilet seats, and included the base of the seat as well as the lid. The gummies were covered with what looked like sugar. They looked good enough to eat .

I washed the sugar off one of the gummies and felt tempted to bite into it.

I walked out of the toilet with one of the gummies so that I could show Siobhan and her friends. Once I caught up with them they told me that they were about to leave.

‘I’ll go on first and you catch up later,’ I told Siobhan.

I hadn’t seen any of the artwork we came for.

In the forecourt, Mokbul (we called him Mok for short), Edward and I bundled into a taxi.

‘The nearest bar,’ we cried out. ‘We need something to eat.’

But we were probably too early. And maybe things were not open on a Sunday.

The taxi wound through the Parisian streets in an area that seemed high up . There was a fabulous view, to our right, of grey rooftops the city.

The taxi stopped at some steps that could have been in Montmartre.

‘Are you not going to drive us down the steps,’ I joked to the driver, as we all—driver included—piled out of the taxi. Instead, the driver took us round the corner and along a wide boulevard with old Parisian blocks. The blocks were deserted and had shut up shopfronts. We continued walking until finally, we came across one empty bar with a lone door that he unlocked.

‘Go in here and we’ll open soon. Mok, Edward, and I walked into a bar which was empty of people but had the homely feel of an olde English pub or an old-timey Western bar.

A soft brown light came in from the thick glass windows that faced the street. The pub had a pool table in the center and the bar had a mirror that spanned the length of the counter. The counter was of a dark gray wood and it had four pumps for ale.

We wandered around looking for a place to sit.

From behind me, I saw a black man in the glasss entrance—or was it a woman—playing with the key lock. Maybe they were opening up?

From behind the bar, Mok found a iron pickaxe with hooks on both ends in case someone would come after us.

‘Don’t carry that around,’ I told him, as he walked cautiously up the rotating stairs to the second floor. ‘You’ll only get us murdered.’

Then he handed me the axe.

Edward and I found a white wooden table replete with four white wooden armchairs on the raised portion of the room. The table seated four and just as we were going to sit, a slight woman with short blonde hair came up to the table next to us.

‘Why don’t you join us?’ I asked her, although she had clearly come with friends.

Then she sat on one of the chairs at our table.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked her.

The woman looked Norwegian, I thought. She reminded me of Alice. She mentioned a town but I only caught her say the word ‘Norway.’

I swiveled a chair from the other table so that I could sit next to her at the head of our table. But I noticed that the base of the seat was wider than the other chairs and that it was too low for the table. If I sat in the chair, I realized that my head would only come up to the height of the table. It would be like I was sitting on a toilet again!

Quickly I swapped the chair for another from the other table and I swiveled that into place instead.

‘Yes I flew to Bergen once to see a girl there,’ I replied. ‘Her name was Alice. And she broke my heart.’

Drawing of back streets in Montmartre by Henriette Kosmann-Sichel via Picryl.

August 6, 2025August 6, 2025

French Trilogy: Hors D’Oeuvres in Amsterdam

The wind struck in an instant, just as the forecast said it would. Rain lashed the white washed walls of the houses by the sides of the canals and the water from the canals splashed over the barriers, splashed across the paving, and flowed under the doors of any canal-side cottages not already protected by sandbags.

The bicycles that were chained to the iron railings grumbled and groaned against their chain linked locks as the wind pulled their frames.

I could have been in Camden on the Regent’s waterways, but this was Amsterdam. Already wet I pushed open the door to an antique shop by the lock side bridge. I jammed the door shut against the wind.

‘That came faster than I thought,’ I said to no one in particular.

I walked up to the shop counter. A French woman wearing a black and white hooped roll necked sweater stood next to me. She was cute, flat nosed, with her short mousey hair arranged in a very Frenchy bob. As I took off my red oilskin hat my elbow accidentally grazed her sweater. Her breast yielded to the slightest touch. I was a little embarrassed. But my touch was not enough to notice, I hoped, given the extremes of the rain and wind outside.

‘They were right about how fast that came,’ I repeated, then I dusted myself down as if drying off like a dog.

‘I saw what you did there,’ hinted the French woman.

A man stood next to her. He looked at me with an irritated and jealous eye.

’You touched my breast,’ she added bluntly, ‘But that’s okay. Now we might as well hug.’

I hadn’t meant anything by grazing her breast but now it occurred to me that we were destined to meet up.

The French woman gave me a warm hug with her head angled briefly against my shoulder, and her breasts felt gentle and warm against my chest. Instantly I felt better about my actions, but also nervous because I had never chatted up a French woman before.

Then the shopkeeper led us into the back of her shop to a large dining room where all of us would be served.

There were three tables in the room. One large traditional dark wood claw foot dining table to the left where most of the people had been seated, another empty table in the middle of the room, and one more blue table on the far side of the room which seated another group but which lacked the formality of the others given its lack of white table cloth.

I walked up to the claw foot table. Diners were already seated on the side closest to the wall. Another man sat at the far end. And I could have sat opposite the diners against the wall but I wanted to leave space for the French woman to join me, so I opted for the seat at the head of the table nearest me. I waved her over to come join us.

The French woman sat down but she took the seat over one so that another guest might sit between us. I smoothed down the table cloth in front of me and looked at the array of cutlery in front of me.

The hors d’oeuvres came first. A simple asparagus salad on a small glass plate. I was conscious of using the outside fork and knife first.

I chatted to the table. When the waiter delivered my salad I realized he was the man who had been irritated with me at the front of the shop. I was afraid he’d give me a smaller portion but when he plonked the plate down between the cutlery, I could see no discernible difference between mine and the other diners’ servings.

I was the chatty Cathy at the table.

The diners talked about a French man I did not know, and the French woman gave me a knowing smile. I was nervous. How could I get close to her once more? How could I feel and sense the smell and warmth of her hug again.

There was a lull in the conversation. I did not want to dominate the table with speeches. Silence bloated the guests. The French woman gave me an encouraging smile.

‘And then there was the story about Paris,’ I began.

‘No, no. Paris was a man,’ I added. I grew concerned that the story about Paris would be inappropriate. I wondered whether the French woman would appreciate my funny story about Paris.

But it was too late.

Because I had begun.

Photo by Jorge Láscar via Flickr.

September 19, 2024October 3, 2024

Perseverance in French

I dreamt that I signed up to teach an algebra class in French. But I struggled with the language, mangling the tenses as I practiced, recalling the words with difficulty. But I did persevere.

June 13, 2024June 22, 2024

The Russian Puppet

She could be Russian, I think, as she holds the door of the motel open for us to continue on through. She’s beautiful with her long bony arms and legs like a raggedy puppet. They move as if disconnected from her body.

Her face, too, is too sharp, her black hair, her pointy nose. And her eyes are large, almost bug like and deep brown. Her skin is stretched taught on those bones, those arms and legs and face, and its coloring is a pale grayish tan, but she’s beautiful you know.

She sympathizes with Liam because we are in the middle of a game and I’m winning because I have the weapon and he doesn’t. She too, knows the game but she is graceful enough to say nothing more about my winning even though she, like Liam, is very good at it and would, like Liam, usually win hands down.

Artwork by CoolArts223 via DeviantArt.

April 27, 2024June 7, 2024

Ana Wintour is my Half-Sister

Ana Wintour who lives in Trotto, Napoli is my half-sister. There is a picture with me and my sister in her apartment and I recognize it because Elaine is wearing her sick dress.

Dad is there too, lying on a couch.

And my mum is in there as well, in a separate old-time black and white photo (the small square postage stamp size ones with crinkled borders) and she does not look quite the same, but still it could be her.

I have to crane my neck as I stand on a chair in Ana’s daughter’s house, looking at the framed photo collage placed high up on the wall above the cupboard door. The wooden chair is rickety but close up in the little black and white photo is my mother, I’m almost convinced. She’s looking square on, and in the photo she has straighter hair than usual, and it is short and parted at the side.

It is the color photo from the 70s that really gives it away though.

My dad is lying on the couch in our living room in Coring Road and he’s holding Elaine as a baby up above him; me, I’m in my green shorts, in the background. And next to that photo is the sick dress photo. The dress was so called because it was a woolen, knee length dress with yellow, blue and red hooped stripes top to bottom.

Elaine had a matching woolen hat, I remember, with a matching multicolored pom-pom. My mother loved that dress. Us, not so much.

Once I saw the dad photo I cried out, “That’s us! that’s us!” as if it was proof.

I got down from the chair and Ana’s daughter came in with two others (was one of them Ana? I didn’t think so), and they sat on stiff backed wooden chairs facing us. Ana’s daughter had thick set black eyebrows, long straight dark hair parted in the middle, and she had a long face.

Anyway, judging by the age of Ana’s daughter I figured at Ana must have been my half-sister, even though she’d have to have been born a couple of years ahead of me.

That’s when I asked Ana’s daughter where they were from and she replied “Trotto… Napoli.” Only I couldn’t quite hear the second word. I had her repeat it, she had a thick rolling Italian accent after all, and at first I heard “Trappoli,” but I hadn’t of heard such a place so I settled on Napoli instead.

The dream was clear about the spelling, Ana Wintour not the other one, but why was this so important to me?
Photo from Thought Catalog via Flickr, credit Quote Catalog.