‘Oh really?’ I heard him say while frowning one eyebrow.
I looked at his obnoxious stare.
‘Yes, really,’ I childishly answered, not caving in an inch.
‘Let’s step outside!’
I punched Billy Childish in the head, where I thought he was most fragile, and yanked his pointy dandy mustache. He was sniffing from rage like a bull. What a bugger I thought. He hit me back in the gut, but I felt little, a miscalculation, he pushed me over, in an attempt to make me loose my balance, but I still stood firm. He countered quickly with a jab to the liver, that hurt. I kept Billy at a distance with a grip to his neck with my outstretched arm. I punched his nose again, he started to bleed. He yelled ‘you bourgeois pig’, but I had no pride and barely heard him. He tripped over his lanky legs, he was awkwardly build, not an attractive man by the average standard, although there was something common about him. This sped through my thoughts as we tumbled to the dust. I landed on top of Billy, I felt the clamor of a short breath against my cheeks, squeezed out of his lungs by his body hitting the ground flat out. I felt like two puppies rolling clumsily over the ground. Neither of us controlled our own demeanor any more, pushed and pulled by the other and by gravity working on our bodies. In the end there was no purpose of course, some by-standers pulled us apart. I was panting, while Billy kept on screaming, trying to hit me with foul words and a vulgar spirit, to which I kept my calm. I thought ‘what trash’ while recuperating. I never liked Billy very much, although he was gifted.

There were no children squealing like piglets while being dragged to the slaughterhouse. There was no pop from a tennis ball slammed by a wooden bat, no short tired laughter. There was no shrill of horny teens being chased into the water. A few hundred meters squatted in the sand, two men sat like desert nomads, motionlessly conversing, in the sand. Further, a girl bend over her boyfriend on hands and knees, her lips kissing his hairy chest. On my other side, a group of chubby boys and girls wobbled like drunken cherubs into the water, attracted to each other by the sheer gravity of their fat wrapped constellations, an obese figure in bikini figured heavily at the water line, like the sun around which these planets of kids circled. But the strange thing was, I heard not a single sound. Higher up the rock, a topless man, hammering the planks for his terrace roof, not a single beat of sound. Even the sea, rolled its waves ashore tacitly. A single cloud hovered still above. A conspiracy to not disturb me.

I gulped down the last bottom of my glass of strong black wine, the local Homeric variation of home brewed wine on the island, and payed the bill, three Euro. I imagined to put down three silver drachma pieces. Would it not be better to still pay in ancient coinage? It is a wishful make-believe that everyone shared. It was night, the constellations guided my way home. The sky, the air, the tree and the road, everything was covered in pitch darkness. But in heaven the stars shone brighter than I ever saw before. I searched for Big Dipper and recognized its handle, the straight cup shape in the sky. The black blanket of night was pierced with flickering holes, a full view of curious eyes that spy on us. I walked up the hill, crossed the bend in the road and passed the trash bins. My eye fell on a carton box and the speckled white puppy head peeking over the edge.

Wolf was a gifted writer. His best work, if you asked Wolf, was a story entitled ‘The Park’. The story explored the sexual impulses of man. Wolf was puzzled by the sexual impulses of men under extreme conditions. The tragic paths of man led into many directions. But the sexual impulse was so essential to the survival of mankind, that it should persist under all conditions.
Otto Frank was trapped in a death camp with other men, separated from his wife, his children, doomed to die. For months, every day, out of nothing that death blow could come, and it was always expected. Completely delivered to the whimsical grace or vice of fellow men, who held the power to save or sentence him. Could under such bare and deprived circumstances possibly grow a homosexual tendency from such an unlikely feeling of intimacy for a rare friend?
On the other end there was a man like Willy Hitler, the ultimate opportunist. Willy was unrestrained in embracing life, not even held back by a fear for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi apparatus. While Otto Frank sat in hiding, while thousands fled Germany, Willy was attracted like a fly to shit by his opportunist instinct and attending tea dances in the Berlin of Kristallnacht.
Both men deranged, one by a cruel fate, one by his selfish nature, but in a way also both survivalists. One corrupted by the destructive effects of the death camps, the other corrupted by his own careless, loathsome lusts. But in the end, there was always still just a man.
They meet in the dark shadows of the night, where there is no good present, no wrong absent, but only a testimony to their self. Could in a perverted way, under bizarre extremes these men recognize in each other a common homosexual desire? It was an unlikely rendez-vous in the park between two radically different men, but Wolf envisioned a common need to be loved.
Like the rest of his stories, however, the story was never published, it was never send, remaining unpublished and virtuoso, while collecting dust on the shelves. Wolf was also not Wolf’s real name. Actually, the man who named himself Wolf had never send any of his stories even to any publishers, agents or magazines. His stories, like ‘The Park’, were a great embarrassment to Wolf. He loved his stories, but because of unbearable shame, he did not even read them, once finished. Wold feared the psychological pit of the soul. Of course, the stories were fiction, so being only their author, Wolf could not be held accountable on their behalf. But he was never able to believe in this innocence of fiction behind the real fantasies of his writing.
His friends nevertheless urged him to publish, more convinced by his talent than the torn Wolf himself.
‘Wolf,’ they pressed him,’everything is thinkable, there is no guilt in the imaginary, angels in heaven worry committing brutal murder, in their cells virgins imagine luscious pleasures, atheists fear a god after life, the perversities of your stories express, if anything, exactly your moral sanity!’
But Wolf was not convinced. He wrote another story and placed it on top of the others, ashamed.

Q: Doctor, welcome. It’s a pleasure and an honor to meet you. You became famous to the general public with your film The Journey of Man for the PBS about the dispersal of the human genome caused by the migration of early man out of Africa. Then next in your career you spearheaded the Genographic Project at National Geographic documenting the human family tree. How do you look back on that time early in your life?

S: The sins of youth! Yes. Well, these great projects not only defined me in the eyes of the public, they also created and offered enormous opportunities that have shaped me and the path of my career. I have a lot to be grateful for to my early work.

Q: But the tone of your early work stands in contrast to your more recent studies in the last fifteen years.

S: Yes. I think that a lot of my opinions, when I was younger, came forth out of the sensation of discovery. The study of anthropological genetics was a groundbreaking field of science at the time. Now, when I look back at those days from a position of knowledge and hind-sight, I can judge my youthful ideas with much clearer insight and balance.

Q: Could one say you were naive perhaps as a young researcher?

S: Don’t get me wrong, the scientific facts still hold as strong today as they did then. The facts were very real, no doubt about that. But looking back, perhaps one could argue that I was motivated by a certain naivety. One has to be when one is making new discoveries, of course, because naivety is the prerogative of discovery.

Q: So how do you explain your transformation then?

S: Well, in my opinion, there is nothing strange about it, it’s not a transformation but a development. My view on genetics now are only the superlative step of my research. My current ideas are not some random opinion without base or factual foundation, they are only the logical deduction of the facts of genetic reality.

Q: Your opponents however accuse you of supremest ideas! Your lecture last week was even interrupted by massive protests of students calling you fascist.

S: Yes, yes. Well, we’re back to the sins of youth again, aren’t we? But let me say this in response, now that I am at least allowed the opportunity to defend myself … I hope.

Q: Ha, ha. Of course, go ahead.

S: How is it, that these same protesters where my biggest advocates when I called to preserve the habitat and cohesion of non-Western indigenous populations while my current supporters said that I was naive, as you call it, and now when I call for the preservation of, among other, western and especially white indigenous populations, the spectrum of opposition changes radically against me again and I become a fascist!? I have always been fascinated by people, by mankind, by each single individual as a unique being possessing a valuable genetic treasure. I reject any claim to a hierarchy of races, I oppose any moral judgment of race, as I reject a moral instead of a scientific judgment of my scientific work.

Q: But you plead for segregation, does that not imply or at least lead toward a hierarchy of races? Economic scarcity, after all, forces populations to impose such a hierarchy in order to justify a claim to those scarce resources and formulate thus an ethics advocating their own prerogative.

S: I am a scientist, not a politician or a theologian. My interest is the preservation of genetic diversity, to keep the gene pool as rich as possible, to guarantee the preservation of the human race. This is not simply an interest born out of personal whim. The health and the survival of mankind depend on this diversity, and this diversity can only be guaranteed by a segregated reproduction.

Q: So you plead for a segregation of reproduction, not a segregation of social life? But is not the only way to enforce this type of reproduction to institute also segregated societies?

S: Again, those are political questions or just speculations perhaps. I realize that my theory may lead sometimes to difficult social or political dilemmas to which we not always have immediate, practical answers. This has always been the tension between science and society, from the days of early science in Greece, to the days of Galileo and the Church. But these challenges cannot be solved by ignoring the scientific facts, and the scientific facts are the only obligation of the scientist.

Q: Finally, I want to thank you for this interview. I greatly appreciated your time today. Can we expect to hear more from you soon?

S: Well, it was my pleasure. This year, I start research for a new book about the psychology of genetics. As my research became more embedded in popular culture, helping to spread an awareness of our genetic identities, I often pondered about the psychological impact of my research, what effect it had on our self-perception. Now, I will finally have the opportunity to explore this in collaboration with some of the most renowned psychologists, and I am looking greatly forward to this.

Q: Well, thanks again doctor, and we look forward to your new research as well.

All his life Arthuro had been an accountant. He had a few friends with whom he drank a port or two after work, every night, on office days, they met at the cafe on the corner in the Barrio Alto. At the cafe there was room for four small tables, each with two chairs, while outside stood a table for four under a lemon tree. But this did not matter, for Arthuro had no more than three friends. The friends joked that there was not another friend because he would not have fitted the table, while they laughed at their common jest. In the weekend however, Arthuro stayed home, he told his friends that he was writing. On Monday evening his friends asked what it was he had been writing on over the weekend, but Arthuro never said more than his usual reply: ‘oh, nothing. What do you drink?’ to which his friends would reply: ‘Port Arthuro, as always,’ and no one remember they had asked.
One day Arthuro stopped visiting his friends at the cafe. The next day his friends heard he had died in his sleep two nights ago. When they attended the wake, Arthuro’s son showed them a thick packet of papers, a manuscript of more than five hundred pages.
‘Look, this is what my father has worked on all his life. I remember, he was writing on it when I was still a child. Did he ever talk about it to you?’
‘Well yes, of course. We knew he was writing every weekend, as he was not at the cafe. But he never said what it was about.’
‘Did you read it?’ the three friends asked, naturally curious of course.
‘Yes, yes, it’s a travel adventure about four men, each living in a different capital of a different continent of the world.’
‘One friend, Tomas, lives in New York City.’
Tomas nodded.
‘Another, Vasco, lives in Paris.’
Vasco frowned.
‘And a third, Antonio, lives in Hong Kong.’
Antonio said nothing.
‘The four are brothers know nothing about each other, but they all are looking for their unknown father, a sailor named Arthuro.’
‘How does it end?’ the friends simultaneously asked.
‘It doesn’t!’ the son replied.
‘The last hundred pages are not there. There should be another hundred pages because the story abruptly ends and skips to a final and empty page, numbered a hundred pages higher. I was hoping you would know about it.’ The son looked hopeful at the three men.
The friends sighed and shook their heads with regret.
After the wake the three men went to the cafe on the corner in the Barrio Alto, sat down at their regular spots, and ordered a port.

Most flesh flies are respectable eaters of carrion, but some have fallen to a state of resorting to feces. The sarcophage of this specie of flies stands not at the end of its life, as we humans might believe to be the proper custom, but at its beginning. The cradle of the flesh fly is a piece of rotting flesh or dried excrement, such is the humble start of its toddlers. The larva are verocious, eating their way into or out of anything edible. The womb of their conception literally a crime scene in which these murderous creatures find a home. They are carriers of common illness for man. It can hardly be a surprise that the fates of man and flesh fly meet.

The glass pane shudders in the wooden frame as the ripples of a sound wave hit the windows. The explosion in the clouds closely above speeds through the air. Thunder for the human soul that is shaken in the blast. The clouds are so thick and dark that I do not see the flash of lightning that announces it. I humbly shiver, my head pivoting on the thin needle of the vertebra, is shaken, my shoulders cramp toward my ears. Inferior is the brain here. Hale is released from the same clouds that are fog, that are air, that are rain, that are wind, the gods icy breath. The rain rattles the earth, the concrete ceiling of my house, the walls are drenched with water seeping through the invisible cracks, saturating the walls, within minutes water penetrates the cement. The light bulbs flicker, then, they too, give way. The hail stones hit the ground so fast, they jump up capriciously in unpredictable direction, hit the glass, hit the stone, while the rain, still, pouring, flooding. The houses of the village are gone, the sea and the horizon have disappeared, all absorbed, gorged by the hellish bright fog of the heavens flood. The mountain is washed from the earth canvas. Three nights and three days, every hour seem to last. I offer an incense of strawberry wood and olive branches, kindle the flames of the fire that stirred quietly before me. My only solace, my single hope, rose into the damp atmosphere of the chimney. On the crown of the mountain, it is not the sea that I fear, it is the heaven, broken open above, the sky of the mountain Ziggurat.

I crossed the river of pain. Some say it heals, for only when one passes Acheron, will one no longer fear the flesh of the body. Tightly clenched in my fist, I still hold the coin. This is the realm of the spirit, where I hold angels dear. For many this is the realm of death, where they feel nothing anymore, know nothing. This is a time to greet, for joy, for welcome. The water is a stream that nourishes the dead who only sense emptiness, they, Lazarus, pray like baboons. But I fear not, no need to fall on my knees. I do not shiver, but frivol. Those who think of death as life, those who fear, they pay a price when they cross, they cannot return. But to me, death is in life, with the spirit in which I joy resurrected.

from the breath of Cronos
is born the island of the goddess
where the lemons grow
departing from the spring of aria
a string of sheep bells
rings from the steps
fleeing before me
leading to the cave of Zas
white steps reflecting the light
the sun rays slide
along a wall of virgin stainless marble
the narrow path of worship
abruptly merges with rough stone ahead
simple limestone
from here to the spring
following the stream
via shrub and rock
that lays bare in the pass
i oversee the southern plain
still below the uniformly gray face
of mountain Zas
that sternly watches down
and guards solemnly
treaded by gods, refuges and sheep
the gorgeous marble crown
like a garment hewn
of metamorphized lime
in the common stone
formed over ages before men
fitted for the god of gods
to the virgin of women
a throne that reaches deep into
the bowels of the mountain
charred in darkness
into men cannot see
unlike the translucent breasts
of the venus of milo
born in this womb
its beauty ravished
limbless now on display
in a vulgar salon
but the virgin
born in this blind cave
the spring of life