The girl with blue hair

I must be losing my touch, thought the girl with blue hair. People would usually stop and stare at her unabashedly, eyes widening mouths agape. Some would also point, in a slow-motion distracted manner, the possibility that they might be rude overshadowed by the fact that they’d been rendered speechless. The girl with blue hair did not mind the attention; one could even say that she revelled in it a little, that she did feel a tiny bit proud of her ability to astonish. But these days people hardly look at her – indeed, they don’t seem to notice her at all. They just walk right past her, where she stands selling soft toys in aid of charity.

Nude woman in red armchair

She sits in the quiet way of a milky Sunday afternoon – her face still delicately clothed; her thoughts colourless and clear; and then the naked freedom of her body. She sits like a moment of rain that falls suddenly amidst sunshine. Everything softens around her (the red chair, the light, the brushes, your own loud thoughts). How can you (not) paint her?

The wild girl

Left-wing, left-handed and left to her own devices, the wild girl is always ready to fight for what’s right.

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The wild girl frequently engages in radical acts such as cutting her own hair, recklessly breaking mirrors, and unleashing the power within, around and beyond. (These events are often connected.)

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The wild girl carries her body like a revolutionary flag or a new tattoo. She has a music video walk, a runway run. She looks funky and cool in all manner of t-shirts and footwear.

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The wild girl laughs, sings, cries, farts and thinks out loud. She’s a billboard kind of girl.

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The wild girl can fearlessly down home-brewed distilled beverages and non-bottled water. She likes her herbal tea the way she likes her food: the hotter, the better. (The same goes for sex, of course.)

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The words ‘subversive’ and ‘hard-core’ fail as powerful adjectives when applied to the wild girl.

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The wild girl isn’t actually that wild at all, not in a feral sense at least. All she really wants is to go to Berlin.

Dreamgirl (a song)

i saw her on the square

white doves in her hair

she was humming a lullaby

to the ocean in her lap

it’s the stuff that dreams are made of she sang

the stuff that dreams are made of

i saw her on the highway

a tiger on her back

she was selling second-hand prophecies

and offered me a pack

it’s the stuff that dreams are made of she said

it’s the real deal

the stuff that dreams are made of

baby it’s a steal

i saw her in the sky

wearing darkness round her waist

her hands were full of laughter

and a smile rode on her face

she was raining the stuff

that dreams are made of...

i saw her in the desert

a childhood in her fist

she had famine in her eyes

and calamity in her throat

whispering the stuff that dreams are made of

it’s the stuff that dreams are made of

baby it’s a steal

the stuff that dreams are made of she screamed

it’s the real deal

Call her Indigo

She arrives on a rainy afternoon or a Saturday night or as you are pouring wine into only one glass. She places nostalgia on the table, spreading its white linen cloth. She lays out the fine china of insecurity and the silver of longing. Then she arranges a fresh bouquet of hopefulness and the air becomes a sigh of unspoken invitations. You did not ask for her to be there; her silence is disquieting. Still, you let her stay.

She's absolutely striking

The letter traveller

Amazing -
how you can look at her
again and again
and still find something else about her
that moves you.
When you touch her
she leans quietly into your hands.
She promises to be
sincerely and faithfully yours
with the warmest regards
and best wishes.
Then she folds herself away
firmly, but with care.
Long after you've let her go
you have a lingering impression
that she was trying to tell you
something between the lines...
She sends you pictures
in postage stamps.
And you know you'll always be
Dear to her.

The alter-ego

The alter-ego lives in a small, cosy cottage up in the mountains. She gets up early and drinks strong, bitter coffee and stretches her arms up and out, as if hugging the mountains and the morning sky. A part of what she wears is always bright red: today it is a satin ribbon in her hair; yesterday it was lipstick and last week it was all in the way she looked at the world. Tomorrow it might be her toenails, but that's another matter. The alter-ego always lives in the present. And she didn't need a psychologist to show her how or existential philosophy to explain it. She manages to be and to be fully present quite naturally. The alter-ego is never bored. There's always something that excites or enthuses her and her face lights up and she goes for it. The alter-ego knows how to take action. You would never find her standing around, twirling her hair and looking a little lost. The alter-ego is always now or never. She doesn't look back, not over her shoulder or into the past - she gets neither anxious nor nostalgic. She dances to any kind of music and she is beautiful and funny and full of grace as she does this. The alter-ego has a way of showing you a different side of yourself. People tend to like and admire her - of course, she does not let this go to her head. She has a balanced sense of self-worth. She does not fret or sulk; instead she grows still, like a lake. Sometimes she wonders what it might be like to be other than who she is; to be a surprising contradiction to herself; to be shadowed by a perfect, attractive opposite. But these thoughts rarely (that is, almost always never) occur to her. For she is right there, in the moment, with bright red accessories, on top of the world - complete and aglow.

She's simply too beautiful for words

!



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...

Monologue of the muse at midday

It is not easy to be a muse at midday. The ones at dawn or dusk are fortunate: all they have to do is point (oh light oh colours oh songbirds). And midnight’s a piece of cake, what with all the fairytale associations, the chiming of the clock ominous all of a sudden, spectres of magic...oooo! Even an amateur can conjure some artistic concoction. But here I am, at 12:00 – half of my target population are drowsily thinking of lunch; the rest are barely waking up (particularly those from the latin regions, or more likely, those inspired by the lucky muses of the small hours). What do I have to work with? The sun’s smack in the middle of the sky. No subtlety, no nuance, no innuendo: only noon. And I have to make do with the mundane: moist coffeepowder in the filter of the coffee machine; miscellaneous city noises; the legs of an anonymous waitress; e-mail (give me strength!); traffic...although I have to say, some of my best work involved transport-based chance encounters {sigh}. Yes, it is a challenge, and in that sense can be quite rewarding...in the end. And sure, no-one can write me off as just-a-pretty-face: it takes a certain level of ingenuity and grace to do what I do. It’s just {slightly imploring, somewhat pissed-off} sometimes I wish it was a little less hard.

Shampoo girl

the metro station –

a whiff of cherry blossom

and cotton candy

The one forever caught in a frenchfilm-like moment

Forever sitting in a café looking pensive and alluring

Forever doing everything as if contemplating everything she is doing

Forever tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear

Forever with wispy hair, riding a bicycle in streaks of sunlight

Forever in skirts or flimsy dresses

Forever buying flowers

Forever shouting close-up

Forever afterwards murmuring in a sweetly plaintive voice

Forever her apartment, strewn with half-eaten baguettes, chocolate spread, red wine, foreign newspapers, and delectable pieces of art (including a portrait of her painted by a former lover)

Forever artistically inspired glimpses of her breasts

Toujours avec des sous-titres

Forever subtitled

Watercolour Woman

She never worries that her mascara will run.

She cries tears of rainbow.

She dissolves easily, like aspirin

(but she can go straight to your head,

especially when mixed with alcohol).

She appears to be seemingly vague somehow.

She likes stepping into puddles.

She always splashes on perfume.

She has the most charming smudged smile.

She believes that first impressionists last.

The glove girl

An amazing contortionist, the glove girl can often be found curled-up in the glove compartment. She does not wear gloves. Instead, her hands are covered in words: in some parts soft as lambs; in others quite leathery and apparently water-resistant. Around her, anyone can become a palm-reader, an unraveller of mysteries. Her hands are mirrors, maps, pure poetry, a party trick. What she finds extraordinary, though, are naked hands: exposed and vulnerable – the gloveless ones. And only gestures for words! The glove girl reaches out to them. Sometimes she offers them the solace of silk or surgical protection (especially for timid or socially awkward hands). And sometimes, she just tries to hold them (gently) in the skin-whispered words of her own.

The one that got away {slightly self-absorbed, not particularly logical}

The café is not dark enough for the one that got away. She can be spotted. (Like a leopard – a glittering wariness surrounds her; she wears caution like a magic cloak.) She does not understand well-lit cafés. Coffee is shades of dark (only briefly starred with sugar) – it follows that cafés should be dark too. Candle-light dark to reflect her thoughts.

The one that got away wonders if she got her way. She packed things up. She detached strings and left none untied. She closed the door behind her. (Closed, not slammed. It was a nice door: lightgreen wood, reminding of avocado and mint, something you could eat or put on your face, and emerge refreshed either way.) The door she is about to open has red and white stripes. As if saying no entry between the lines. What’s behind door number two? [a stranger music; the sound of rain; the smell of a hidden garden]

When she opens the door, a stranger music greets her. Hello, says the one that got away. The music stops in response. The end of the track. (Is this where she ends up? She got away, however. Notwithstanding.) She sits down: carpeted floor – high maintenance. Why are soft things always high maintenance? She closes her eyes, imagining the sound of rain in the sudden silence.

She dreams of a hidden garden. It contains only the outline of flowers. And their smell. The air is incensed with it! It’s the most beautiful garden she has ever not seen.

Time to go, thinks the one that got away when she opens her eyes. She can never stay too long. Especially in too-soft, highly maintained spaces.

She’ll leave the café soon. As soon as it stops raining. The light disappointed her. (Light sets one up for disappointment. One knows it cannot last. Unlike the insomniac darkness of a night that goes on and on...)

What did she get away from, after all? She was trying to escape her self, like everybody else (except those ones who are still absurdly trying to find theirs). But all she managed to do was to cut herself out, so that now she is here: a paper version, two-dimensional and a little stiff. While somewhere else that smells of roses and rain the one that got her way stands, ephemeral and bright, the outline of a flower.