Apple of Sodom

In this, the capital of Velours, one can find the blooms from the flowers of Lacuna. One must not look for them or seek with effort their evanescent perfume. Alas, they bloom in spirit only and one can but only caress in gauche contretemps the intangible flower with one's hands or digits.

These impeccant blooms only but florescent around a statue in the centre of the labyrinth of the capital of Velours, itself occupying the centre of the capital, itself taking place in the centre of the unknown and well-known universe of the beauty of things. The most aware Salons de Velours, where one would witness the whispers of osculating ideas between epistemophiles and pansophists, would refer to this concept as the Abîme de Velours. One polyhistor much compared it to the centre of an onion when the onion's centre is still unseen and then completely undressed: the Grand Dévoilement. Yet, another erudite even referred to it as the encapsulated known unknown light: imagine if you will, a light source much like a bulb, emanating from  within a loving dark and warm sarcophagus from which a cord extends. One can turn on and turn off this light source by means of an apparatus attached to the cord. It is by engaging the light source that one knows that there is light within, but one cannot see it for no light can escape its pod. Is this not the illustration of faith? Knowing without proof of body, sight, touch or smell, yet still knowing?

In any account, in the Abîme de Velours lies an unpretentious decaying and armless statue of a boy at the feet of which one can find the elusive flowers. If one is able to pull the veil from the prehensible and tangible world, one can read the invisible words that are written on its pedestal : "It is best to hold vacuity with the absence of self or its extension, for by allowing oneself to escape one's identity while becoming everything is the only way to have communion with nothingness."  By these words, the called-upon will comprehend that encircling the evanescent or the occult with nothing but the idea of encapsulating can only but give limited form of body to the immensity of nothingness. In a word, Beauty is in the mind, not the hand.

What good are hands in this realm? seems to voice the boy's muted secret. The flowers of Lacuna only bloom around those who have no use for picking them. And so, just like these flowers, Beauty appears suddenly to those who search no longer for its use, for it has no use in the real world.

Lessons about Beauty from the armless boy in the Velours Abattoir

Beauty, if truth should be readily understood, has no other "use" than to signal the lifted corner of the veil leading to the Grand Dévoilement, the very last peel of the onion before it is pulled away from its centre, the known-unknown of the invisible light that shines from within a realm into which we are attached but by a thread. And yet, when some have the privilege of experiencing the Great Unveiling, some are tempted to analyze it, to understand it, to have its sacredness capitulate to their risible Self, to live it as Self and for Self despite the aforementioned necessity to be egoless in the realm of Lacuna's flowers. It is then, that Self branches its hands and desires to touch the flower it contemplates, turning it immediately to dust.

Vicomte de Velours

Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir

Natura abhorret a vacuo (Nature abhors a vacuum)

As I was completing my promenade with Mademoiselle Mozhna one late afternoon in the capital of Velours, I happened to cross a reminder of death and life, a memento mori if you will: a balloon filled with the air of the breath of the living. The sight of the already deflating souvenir of the mortal ether spun both of us into the maelstrom of human questioning. How long had this breath been thus captured? Had it been there since the beginning of Summer's fairs? And was it filled with the breath of a parent's love for his or her child? Wouldn't one want to collect this memo of love as a reminder of the still encapsulated breath of one's loved one, and preserve it for a time when the visible world seems too dense to see through it, and feel yet one last time, one very last time, the lost one's breath against his or her cheek, one very last time?

Why was such a precious breath discarded in such a way? Was its soul purpose that of the ephemeral game of life, a simple badinade? As I observe even closer the spectacle before me, the balloon's stem reminded me of the knotted umbilical cord of a new born. How symbolic, I mused. Here in one image, all of life combined: the forgotten yet manifested value of mortal breath in its truest form, escaping, slowly and enulactably, leaving behind the wrinkled body that once was flushed with colour, its value increased through its brevety; and the knot, against all odds, that tries to prevent it, alas, from escaping. Should one hold on as long as possible to one's own breath for fear of needing it one day? And does one not take away from its value when one tries to hold back one's breath? Very difficult it is to eat, kiss, blow bubbles and sing and talk and speak poetry when one's breath is tied...very difficult indeed!

Decisively, one lives when one breathes; one loves life when one accepts breath's, and by extension, one's finite nature. Letting go of the breath that holds you. This is the invisible lesson inscribed into one's own lungs, the tree of life within. 

As I child, I remember holding my breath, engulfing the trees i held within with all the might and magical belief that inspires childhood, believing this would preserve my life a while longer. It would, I thought, delay my demise, put a crease in time, suspend the animated, and bring me one more breath closer to life, one more breath away from material end. Maybe it worked, for it seems sometimes as if my life is endless. Maybe the child I was knew what I forgot as an adult, that value comes with playing with one's breath. Practicing the letting go. As a child I remembered this game to be funny. I laughed out loud, bursting into laughter once I let go of my breath. Laughing in the face of Death: Ha ha! See Death, my laughter keeps my trees strong where my cooing heart keeps its nest!

Lessons from the Velours Abattoir

Lessons from the balloon:

Breath will escape you, little by little. It is not yours, it was lent to you for a brief time. If you don't spend it, its value decreases. 

Lessons from the breath:

It is truly a gift that tries to teach us to let go during every moment of one's life. Till the end, it will accompany and teach and guide, teaching to let life in, then letting life go, letting life in, then letting life go...and then letting life breathe us in and letting us go, and breathing us in...

Monsieur Franken-Momo: A treasure well loved…and abandoned

As I scouted the living area for Mademoiselle Mozhna’s favorite toy — Mademoiselle Mohzna is my toy pet and “fidèle compagne” who, despite her Lilliputian heart, has a great gift for teaching unconditional love. And, as most descendents of the grey wolf, the canis familiaris is touched with the gift of a certain clairvoyance when it comes to peering through their master’s soul. They are adept in following you everywhere you go, even in your deepest most arcane and inscrutable garden.

And so, it came to a great surprise to find that this meek creature of beauty devoured her toy monkey which we affectionately refer to as Monsieur Momo. As much as toys could  encapsulate  the gift of life, Monsieur Momo is the paragon of exemplary objects which incarnate both the calm patience of being tossed around and incessantly being used at will on the one hand, as well as the merciful forgiveness of limitless abandonments on the other. In any case, I — and no doubt Mademoiselle Mohzna — had grown very attached to Monsieur Momo.

As I lifted his spiritless body to eye level and carefully examined his torn remains, I stood in silent wonderment. Was the ever so dainty and darling Mademoiselle Mohzna avenging me in some way? How could she otherwise be the author of such a destructive act if not secretly motivated by a yet unnamed form of unconditional love? Maybe she saw him as a ill possessed form, a Golem, a Frankenstein, an idol of and effigy to man's ego; nothing but man's autocannibalistic egocentric creation of  himself. I was astonished because she had ripped his arm off in such a frightful way as to show nothing but three threads still attaching it to Monsieur Momo’s torso. I say “it” when speaking of the soon to be vestigial arm since I presumed it now assumed a life of its own and had become anonymous given that it was now but partially attached to its trunk, which gave it its meaning and its life. Perhaps it was ill considered of me to believe that this unpleasantness could only come to the ineluctable amputation of the beloved Monsieur Momo’s arm. Was I being too arrogant and eager in believing that if only three little threads united two objects that these two objects no longer formed one, and that one was more important now than the other? Was my ego too obtuse to comprehend the fact that one could become two or even three (Monsieur Momo, uniting thread, arm) and that now Monsieur Momo had been transformed into Monsieur Momo the trunk, Monsier Momo the arm and Monsieur Momo the now…?

Poor Monsieur Momo! I felt such sympathy for him. Isn’t it strange how stitching a simple face unto a stuffed wool sock can make it at once so foreing from its initial nature and yet so endearing, and can bring out one’s own long forgotten compassion to the surface? But compassion for whom? One could posit that the torn toy monkey was evoking the wound in me, mirroring the lost innocence, the woolen embouchure through which fibrous leukous batting oozed out reminded me of the tear/tare in me. 

I remember all the times we had shared playing together, Mademoiselle Mozhna and I, through him. And now, for some arcane reason I found myself compelled to tend to his wound, as if it were my very own or that of a forgotten orphan. Of course, I know our dear reader as most reasonable people would see Monsieur Momo as an object and nothing more than a used sock put to recycled use. However, Monsieur Momo transcended any banal object, especially now given that he distinguished himself by exuding more human qualities: imperfection, hurt, abandon and love. However, what made the experience so different was that despite his gaping wound, Monsieur Momo was still smiling, not caring at all about the soon to be amputation which was to follow. This composure differed immensely from that which one would normally see in the human fauna. I intuited that Mademoiselle Mohzna and myself, the Viconte de Velours, had yet so much to learn from life from such a humble little humanoid whose smile was as permanent as the thread with which it was stitched — one could not amputate a smile…

Lessons from the Velours Abattoir:

What a toy teaches us about life:

-One whose functions are to be used, thrown away and then abandoned will loose a part of oneself in the process.

-When one looses a part of oneself, others can see this part as being meaningless, but it is up to oneself to determine if this is a new extension of oneself or if this new death is the opportunity one has always wanted to become lighter, to change one’s identity and wear a name that is closer to the sound to which one’s soul beckons.

What useless threads teach us about life:

-Sometimes, one must cut the threads that enslave the dead and cumbersome parts of oneself in order to cut open a window in an otherwise blind wall. Only then can Spring spear through the shadows one holds onto and give love’s grace. Once cut, it doesn’t mean we are less than before; it means we are more human; and closer to home.

-Sometimes one keeps all the meaninglessness of one’s life together with nothing more than a fragile thread. It is maybe what is needed at the time, but eventually, one knows that will come the time to thank these parts of oneself that are now useless, enflame them on Truth’s floating pyre, and set them adrift on the waters of wisdom and acceptance.

-One can be one’s wound, and let it take one’s life, inch by inch until one’s whole being is a wound. It is difficult to let go and cut away at a very important part of oneself, but it is better than letting the wound fester and reside in our souls. One is better feeling the hurt than becoming and being the hurt in one’s life.

As we say here in the Velours Abattoir : “Follow the heart, not the hurt.”

Vicomte de Velours

Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir

Two Spoons, One Bowl and a Napkin

How very strange it is that one doesn’t look at the bowl while one is eating in the chalice of bounty. In fact, it would strike one’s mind as being quite odd to do otherwise.

Hunger makes one blind to beauty, thankless to life, and deaf to reason. The tongue and the tenebrous moist palace in which it resides are both insensitive to the details that light and its prism bring to the world. Instead, its vocabulary as it relates to beauty conjugates itself through relief, taste, and warmth or lack thereof.

Nourishment, however, makes one forget whom one was when hunger struck. Paradoxes abound when in the presence or absence of food. Lack of food can make a sinner out of any saint, can make a wise man overcome with folly, can make any pacifist belligerent. Truth be told, all three were most likely never as humble as the anonymous hands who made the thankless spoon that fed them.

I myself have never spent time thinking about the hands that crafted the spoon I bring to my mouth. The spoon, curved so lovingly to espouse the delicate arc of my lips without cutting their sensitive scarlet flesh. The perfect spoon is an imperceptible cradle to the tongue and adds to the sensuous velvet pleasures of the mouth whilst balancing itself perfectly between an accusatory index and a judging thumb like the scales of Justice itself. A silver messenger always bringing to the moist temple of desire what it has usurped from the heavens.

The napkin, for its part, is a wrinkled witness-like shroud betraying the civility of the tamed cravat-wearing ape. If not well folded upon itself like a three panel religious scalene to eclipse the profane lunar eye form gazing upon the vestiges of the bestial markings of the soiled saint within us; if not well discarded, scandalously exposing the animal stains left behind in our Hun-like fury to pillage the invesseled bounty; if left insolently on the table or the chair, the napkin is a planted flag which symbol boisterously claims the supremacy of animal hunger over civilized and leashed wolf in the strange savage country of the table, testifying the grotesque in every one of its translucent fat markings trailing like comet tails of light across a paper or cotton sky — sole proof of the Cartesian binary falsehood since we are animals who write and not writers who “ animalize”. The simple truth read in the human stain of the napkin, a common denominator to prince and pauper which power unravels the loose thread of mankind’s yarn cloak — to say that this vulgar wiping cloth is the origin of a vitriolic quodlibet for a Rousseauian debate.  

Alone, the napkin tells the story that a monster ate here. The empty bowl, however, tells the story that someone (i.e. an animal) is no longer hungry or is temporarily satiated and thus can now coherently root him or herself in the belief that only animals have savage impulses. It sings its humble delight to have served so faithfully the function for which it was designed. In front of the voracious beast, it is a trough. It extols the giving virtue of the divine intelligence within the digits which crafted it. The bowl, oh so promising of goodness when empty, oh so fulfilling like forgiveness when full, embracing of possibility, a ceramic open prayer, an extension of the cupped simple hands of the craftsman who shaped it, like the hands of the slave, open in communion, capturing refreshing water, ceremoniously giving drink to the thirsty Pharaoh.

Lessons from the Velours Abattoir:

Lessons from the spoon:

-The messenger is more important than the message. The best messenger is one who does not taint the message, keeps imperceptible, doesn’t change the taste of truth as he feeds it to us. Think not of what is being said or done or how, but by whom.

-No matter how insignificant we feel as a people in the face of government or political injustice, we are the ones who tame the social beast, make it seem civilized when it devours our children; we are the ones who carry to its mouth the heavenly gifts of art, beauty and innocence.

Lessons from the bowl:

-When one is dealing with the hunger of others for any kind of earthly or spiritual nourishment, one must assume the altruism of the bowl and answer the call to nourish only if the voice one hears is not that of one’s own hunger.

-No matter if your bowl is golden or made of the simple stone, it is the quality of the food carried that counts.

-When hungry, one often doesn’t care about the details. As much as hunger sieges one’s mind, one must practice observance since one can easily fall prey to a trap and fall in someone else’s bowl…

Lessons from the napkin:

-We all leave behind a memory of our passage. It is inevitable. The question is how much of the animal vestiges of ourselves are we able to honor as much as our “civilized selves”. The other question is on whom we leave these markings and which impact they have on their lives. In this regard, one must really make an effort to order the saint aside and let the benevolent ape take its place. The animal part of oneself lacks intention to hurt or take advantage; it knows only humble compassion.

-If one wishes to be reminded of one’s humble nature, one needs only look at the markings of one’s napkin. Yes, the napkin is proof of our civilized state, but the markings on it are proof that the remains of our animal vestiges always come to the surface. The napkin is only but a shroud of the side of our human stain we wish to discard once we have finished devouring that for which we didn’t take care of thanking.

-The napkin is the reminder of our civilized stained shame on paper maybe but also proof of pleasure. What would happen if we were to sport our pleasure on our faces, leave the drools of fat and red wine on our chins? Wouldn’t we be more frank about our lust for life and food? Wouldn’t we be able to better know the person with whom we are talking if we could tell how he or she eats? Beware of the immaculate mouth! Life and love are clean words in this mouth for it doesn’t know the smudges of lust, nor the pungent golden sun of garlic, nor the earthy rich joy of wine’s stains lingering like laughter in one’s throat after having had a good belly laugh. Beware of the clean mouth: it counts the grains it eats, it measures the kisses it takes, it is a closed door that opens only to let dying words escape. It is the tailor of anachronous love for it lacks its generous velvet.  

Vicomte de Velours,

Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir

Symbiotograms, Ambigrams and Palindromes of Life

As I entered the art gallery I was asked to leave my umbrella at the checking counter. In exchange for my umbrella, I was given a number that I needed to bring back to collect it back. The plasticized little square on which was no doubt written a number which corresponded to the box in which the umbrella was deposited was stuck into one of my pockets in an absent-mindedly fashion as I climbed the staircases leading to the gallery’s café. Once there, I requested a grilled brie and pear Panini with Dijon mustard and an Orangina to drink. In the process of pulling out bills of money out from my pocket that the checking ticket fell to the ground. I was struck by the problem: was it number 18 or 81?

This would not have given any reason for any pondering or inquiry had this number been 69 or 11.  Such are the mysteries of the mathematics of life seen through the prism of aesthetics and semiotics. How we are easily made fools in the mirror palace of our experience of the nouminal. We believe that we are dancing elegantly with the mystery but we are only stumbling. Just when we believe that life is a coherent line, it becomes circle. Just when we believe it is linear, it becomes ambivalent. It reads as a symbiotogram, sometimes as an ambigram or a palindrome.

Lessons of  life from the Velours Abattoir:

-Life presents messages to us that seem to be so clear and indisputable in their interpretations. However, the truth could also be told indisputably from other people’s perspectives.

-One can easily become the target of such a phenomenon as well. People could easily fall prey to their linear reading of their selves and others. One could also have a crystallized perception of oneself because one never had the chance to see oneself upside down forced by a chaotic situation. This is why traveling and learning foreign languages and cultures allows one to at the least skim the very surface of one’s own incoherences.

-Maybe I should wear a T-Shirt on which one could read the number 18 in front, and 81 in the back, just as reminder of this observation.

Vicomte de Velours,

Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir

A cocoon’s still naufrage in the corner of a statue’s eye

Statues have always mesmerized me. They seem to choose to keep silence, guard it even,  as apposed to being voiceless or obmutescent.  They conspire in keeping a secret from us all. However, their knowing beguiling smiles betray them. They are bearing consciousness.

Was there a pact between these fantastical creatures and the arcane universe that created them? Are they the embodiment of the sculptor’s mysterious energy breathed through him in an inaudible whisper? Was there an exchange between stone and hand similar to that between Pygmalion and Galatea, waiting only for our sight to truly see what is there? Maybe it is because they are so trustworthy with the secrets of those whose lives they have been the witness to, they are given quasi-eternal life in return. They guard us, look upon us, but resemble us only in image. They are foreign creatures that populate our necropolis, collecting moss, decaying at a slower rate than our flesh, but still knowing love’s erosion, although unable to share their anguish of the end, be it that of stone or marble into dust.

In the corner of a statue’s eye, I spied an abandoned empty cocoon. But was it a cocoon or was it a nest? Regardless, it is a naufrage full of empty life, left there by the former occupant that had undoubtedly reached the apex of his transformation, like a full suitcase left open on the bed of an abandoned hotel room, stuck between two worlds: that of the staying and that of the leaving.

Needed he a witness to his birth? Needed he a silent guardian looking over him in his vulnerable dormancy? Needed he the unflinching gaze of the statue as an untold and untelling testament to his brief passage from a wingless bug to his flightful  new form? What an odd place to have spun such a silk vessel. Such is the importance that some share with pharaohs that they prefer the testament of their lives to be the sarcophagus of their death than the beauty they left behind. Thus is also the way of the effigy. In this both share the same origin. However, both are paradoxal in nature as well, since one is there as an immutable representation of the mortality of men, a testament of lives gone, crystalized beauties and demi-gods; while the other is a testament of fluid and perpetual change.  Life and death, both  so closely woven together that to pull on just one thread warps the narrative beauty of the entire tapestry.

Lessons of life from the Velours Abattoir:

What one can learn form such a spectacle? From the perspective of the statue, and that of the insect?

Here are the common lessons we share with the statue on an insect’s naufrage:

 -That we all need testament of our passing, regardless how small it is by those who will still be there long after we will be gone.

-That we all leave behind what we used to be to become what we are called to become. In this way we disappear from the sight of those who are blind to the reality of our new realm.

-That what we leave behind is a shell made too small from our own perceptions of the limits  of our boundless minds, bodies and souls.

-That some of us prefer to leave behind ornate mausoleums much grander and emptier than the lives we incarnated.

Here are common lessons we share with the insect on the statue’s stillness:

 -That some of us choose to be the silent witness to others’ metamorphosis, and stand quietly in life hoping that love’s transformative erosion forgets us.

-that one sure way to become invisible, is to be quiet

-that we are, each one of us, the silent guardian of another.

All in all, blessed is the one who finds the corner of the benevolent eye of a silent guardian to change and leave his corporeal vessel .

Vicomte de Velours, 

Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir

Rain Bird

If one is in search of one's lost or abandoned heart, one must serve oneself exquisite Art and food prepared with largesse -- like two silent and invisible vowels which make the pure sounds of the numinous language of a merciful god which can only nestle in the cradle of a place rich of the forgiveness of Beauty's songs. 

It is because I wanted to hear the sirens' songs, hear them pronounce my real name -- a name that breaks the sacred seal of my own soul -- the same name that one recognizes only in the face of nameless Love which absconds through the crescents of Art's light which cut through Time's tortured, twisted and immutable hands -- for Art, just as water, absquatulates the spurious prehensile fist that desires to take hold completely that which holds it. 

It is because I was thirsty to hear my soul's name again, thirsty to answer it's compelling call, that I directed my steps toward the art gallery's bistro before kneeling my mind in front of the masterpieces that awaited my gaze, two ornate chalices who have waited all this time, from the moment when the artist's paintbrush maculated the canvas to the moment where I would stand motionless, at once humbled and filled before greatness.

The golden sphere of day was promised for other eyes than mine. It was softly raining on the patio where the lush greenery's undulating curves reminded a Bathesheba making love to the eye and the rain alike. The patrons had left the charming white metal tables and folding lattice chairs and brought their albescent porcelain plates in from the canescent sky.  An imposing glass wall parted the somber intimate dining area from the greyish chaos of nature which only allowed communion through very large glass French doors that no one seemed interested in closing behind them since it was warm. Inside, the air bathed in baroque gilded mirrors, flickering candlelights and pungent perfume of boisterous bouquets of casablancas, which gaping mouths reminded those of birds praying to be fed, and instead of tongues, the humid erotic mind's eye would be invited to caress the elegant lily's pistils, darting obscenely towards its patrons. 

I was attracted by a magnificent crystal vase of casablancas which was placed on a table adjacent to the glass wall. From here one could see and hear birds fluttering about and bathing in puddles of water. I could feel the cool breeze of the nearby opened French doors as well as the wet smell of freshly drenched rain evaporating on previously dusty hot concrete. My spirit was mesmerized by the dancing light through the cuts of the crystal; chards of dispersed coloured beams arcing through the myriad of expressive prisms which had been chiseled into flowers and arabesques. I was ready to capture the uncapturable with the photo camera I always bring with me on my travels, when the capturable came in: a small bird, in from the rain.

Among the cackles of laughter, the grotesque gestures, the monstrous mouths moistened with raspberry vinaigrette and white chardonnay, the small bird seemed much more like a brownish speck. lilliputian in dimension, nothing spectacular in colour, but godly in flight. A chosen messenger from the rain, reminding the pilpulists of the necropolis of reason and divertissement pascalien of our condition through many folds: that some share cages while others share lives and food; that no matter how small one is in the face of the great roar of life, greatness is carried in all vessels alike --The question then becomes, are we small enough to carry the greatness?

Lessons of life from the Velours Abattoir:

-One sometimes needs to be reminded of the imperceptible limits that one allows in one's life

-Wings are not always useful : one also needs to walk into some situations and take ownership of the ground upon which one walks. 

- A cage is not as much a cage if one chooses it.

-A cage ceases to be a cage if one has a soaring song in one's throat  

- There are great things that come in from the rain

Vicomte de Velours

Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir