a park in autumn — a version (1 in a sequence)

This is a story of an exile and a refugee. talking walking drinking espresso and waiting. This is how they met, perhaps we’ll get back to what this meeting means later…

Your sitting in the park, a notebook and a slim book in your hands. Your right foot slightly swollen with gout. It’s a paradox that you are waiting for the drugs to work, to help you walk across the park. It takes place (you think) at an individualistic and at the quasi-individual level. Legs out-stretched you look across the path and park. Are you an exile like Walter Benjamin ? Who because he was a Jew, a communist and an intellectual, got into more and more trouble until he took his own life while fleeing from German soldiers, whilst you are in semi-permanent exile. Did Benjamin take his own life? Had he not long before, when he was still, as they say, alive among the living, completely disappeared into the world that he had tried to document and which was never to release him? More you would not like to say… actually Quasi-individual suits you better you think. You stand and walk, limp across and along the path. The brass ferrule at the tip of the walking stick tapping the path; step tap limp step tap limp, the walking stick is slightly curved, shaped like a katana scabard, the handle wrapped in cloth, touching the path, the park. A breeze sways the trees. Crows on the grass. The pain in your foot is supressed by the drugs. What do I look like you wonder. The dark blue cotton hoodie is unzipped. A heavy white teeshirt showing beneath it…. You have been in exile for so long, across the cities, familiar seas, mountains, mountain ranges, the isthmus, st petersberg, vladivostok, rivers, estuarys, seas, oceans clouds, buildings and places, the no longer unknown spaces of the planet, there are no unknown spaces left. Traversing an earth as dangerous and as venomous as a rain forest… I regret no longer being able to stand on the rocks on the edge of the China Sea feeding the gulls, still damp from swimming in the sea. Could I reopen this today. (Here i seem to have inexorably slipped into the first person where i belong, the abstraction collapsing with the katana disguised as a walking stick.) The world I lived in then, at that time? You sigh between steps, so long since I chose exile, leaving the little group that was our tribe, a crazed adventurer leaving, vanishing over the horizon, for my part becoming something, an exile, traveler, reader, and a bit marxist. Beginning to be, the way you leave to go into east asias. The taste of the sea. Sounding like the waves as… There wasn’t much I could do about it, but wouldn’t you like to know how we might have lived there? But your not here, you are at work whilst i am in the park feeling sorry for myself. No one taught me about these things… How many times as I traveled across the sea , over the aluetion islands, the japanese archipeligo, and some of the islands I remember working on , Ishigaki, Rishiri, Hario, Hokkido, Kyushu and… The handbook of waves. And then after the last trip to Hokkido sitting on the beach massaging your ankle. Watching the Kenyan walkers and the Ethiopian runners passing along the coast. Sailors buying supplies from the chandlers or these hunters so diverse and yet omnipresent, you an exile, abandoned, forgotten, but not forgotten. Here I am an exile approaching the end of the path through the park, thinking — I’d like to be waiting for a train on the Chou-Sobu or the Sobu Line. You call him — “Hi i’m at the park, the east gate, I know I’m sorry I was stupid, my foots about to give out could you…” You sit on the bench and wait for him to arrive. You always hope, today and every minute for something other than what you see and live, another world than this one which is so revolting with its violence and ugliness, another humanity than I believe myself to be — hope, i live between these two branches. I sit on the bench and watch the road, I am happy, you are happy…

I limp over to the small coffee van and buy a double espresso with a touch of milk and a flapjack. The barista is from Turkey, “ it wasn’t good there” he explains. Who am i ? sitting on the bench eating her flapjack slowly. There is no we that I belong to, no group which I can identify with, a unique genetic code sitting on benches sipping good espresso. One of many parks and we are all sitting on many benches across the multiverse. Singularities all exiled from what was home. Who am i not? When they had run across the face of capital, choosing exile ending up in the outer suburbs of this city. In exile they were reterritorialized back into the systems they had run from. Not allowed to be invisible and live. Instead they had to be protected, oppressed and liberated — why were they not killed ? [my adventures with killing people have come to an end, end. It’s a shame as I liked them. I am glad they ended, so that I can sit in this park waiting…. ] The sun is heating my black covered legs, warming my feet. Only the bandage on my left foot and ankle is white. A park waiting in the breeze. The laws of the inanimate were occupying the park as much as the rest of the universe, with their redundancies, new stories, biochemical for it’s part, as much as sitting on this bench sipping coffee as the breeze arrives. did we begin locally as a translation error, from the moment when repetition, when my creators made a mistake, from the first slip, from the first mutation, which, eyes closed facing the warming sun, which played the role of another inclination, as improbable, as random, as a minor hopeful monster. Here though yawning in the sun, coffee tasting of caramel and chocolate almost dribbling out of the corner of your mouth, disobedient erroneous and falsifying. These new combinations are how (from what) evolution and development begin. No different for species or individuals except its also how the change and disappear in a narrative that endlessly continues. So many recombinations that were invented so many years ago before exile had begun. I focus, forcing myself to be in the here and now, “Good coffee this” I offer. “Are you waiting for someone?” The Barista asks, curious perhaps at what this solitary person is doing sitting on the bench in the sunshine, but perhaps just bored. “Yes they are coming to pick me up… (this is being written in burgendy ink and the grey of the default typeface in evernote) … my ankle is hurting, so it’s difficult to walk… can i have another one of these and a bit of halva? “ Holding the nearly empty cup up between us. “Would you like the pistachio or chocolate?” “Pistachio please…” Whilst the barista prepares it… In the quiet of the moment, whilst the machine heats the water he asks — “How did you hurt your foot?” “I was practicing some kicks, overstretched lost my balance, overstressed my tendons, bruised my foot and stupidly did not stop which made it worse… then this… it will take a couple of days more…” “Dance kicks?” He asked. “No martial arts kicks, taekwondo.”

They talk about their lives, the baristas life mostly not much needs to be recorded, because after all his story made public might expose him, even harm him, it’s quite ordinary after all — He said ‘I’ as he spoke. I thought that I should have said and thought we, then he says in the discussion of museums and places that “… places are beautiful…” he said. It made me shudder you know, it made me think back to those early summer days from before I came into exile, where all you would see were cherry blossom and the sun was delightful and relentless. The sun encouraging us to lie down on the ground and absorb the heat. “… we are surrounded by the greatest of free shows. Places. Most of the place I get to go to are made by man, then remade by man, the streets are often deserted, deserted boulevards, teeming beaches, i used to see empty steppes, dusty deserts, enormous reservoirs, agricultural scrap rusing by farm buildings, villages and vanishing points which give us hope…. Since I came here I have become obsessed with places, This place obsesses me….” He said, obviously pleased to be able to say this to someone. “Were you an architect before you came here ? “ I asked him. “Yes, almost, it was the politicsthatbrought me here, I came into exile, a political refugee because… well the Enesdeape, after that we tried it with grandpa and parents that was, offered exile or death… I’d like to understand poetry, perhaps even prose, but being here I had to chose something which my quasi-legal status allows… Do you like places? “ I didn’t answer directly instead I avoided the question, and yet did not. I did not ask what or who the Endesdeape was, perhaps I should have, instead i said “ In my view, poetry and prose isn’t any different from good coffee. “ Holding the empty cup between us, trying i suppose to comfort him. “You think so? Would you like some vodka?” “No, “ I said, “ I shouldn’t drink because of the drugs for this.” “I understand, sometimes people like a shot in the afternoon…” He said with a smile. “I do like good vodka though, there was a bar in Tokyo which sold Vodka and Suchi, strangely it really worked as a mix. was run by retired gangsters… nice people.” “The odd thing about this city is that its not like the rest of Europe…” “ What do you mean? “ I asked him. “ Its strangely different about what is banned and what isn’t, a sort of weird multicultural interindependence.” He said with a wry and slightly cynical expression. “True,” I answered, “ …when it comes to this sort of thing…” “…do you like places?” He asked again placing a small tray on the bench. “I’m not allowed to travel.” A touch of regret hanging off the words. “Really are you committed to the pledge of non-traveling?” “No, though I think I would be if I was allowed to travel…” “Why not then?” He pauses and added by way of explanation “ … I can’t travel because I’m not a full citizen yet.” “How long does it take to get citizenship these days?” “Another year. I have residency, waiting for a full work visa, but I cannot use my old passport because as a refugee I can’t…and even then I rather like doing this…” “I see, different from my case. I am a citizen. (I said, pausing , thinking that perhaps i should not speak, but my foot is hurting and whilst the drugs are making the pain bearable, I’m enjoying sitting here in the park in the warm sunshine. Enjoying talking with him. I shrug and speak anyway.) I cannot because my exile contract puts restrictions on me. This is a police state for me.” “How is that…? “ I shrug twisting my arms in a stretching motion. I answer as best I can. “You come from a different sort of police state… for me, as an exile, who is an ex-criminal they imposed significant restrictions.” “What sort of criminal?” He asks carefully, not sure what to expect. “Gangster, I was a gangster, a bureaucrat really, when I came here I became a business…” Still even now I am amused by how the painful leg made the partial truth slip out when speaking to the barista. “Really? You don’t look like a bureaucrat…” He paused and made another customer a few coffees and teas, before continuing “…I was a criminal at home as well, here i break a few laws to live. “ The barista said. “It all depends on what the crime is, they said i was a terrorist.” “Were you? “ I asked him, interested in how he described his past. “ I don’t think so, but its all relative. They defined me as a terrorist, so i became one for the world at large…” “ They don’t know that here do they?” “Don’t think so. But as they defined me, as one so it will be..” We paused. Both of us thinking that we had said too much. “ Doesn’t matter, these days i am not a criminal. I was but all the years during which I was , all I did was do what my family said…” I said reassuringly. He understood what I was saying. “…Ät home of course gangsters ran everything, I was and am apolitical refugee, because Enesdeape…” “Well, everything is political, from sipping this coffee, to sitting on this bench with my injured foot, to my state of exile and the contract I live within. And all refugees are political refugees… “ I said watching his face to see how he understood this… “…Gangsters like bureaucrats usually work with the state. There is no such thing as apolitical” I said to the barista. “I suppose so, yes they are part of the state really. No sovereignty without gangsters, its how i ended up here….” The barista said with a touch of sadness. “Same, though unlike you I did things that civilized people think of as terrible…” “Terrible?” “Oh yes, it was a long time ago, it involved killing, harming, threatening, the usual stuff… Which is why I cannot travel. When i came here, into exile I had to become this, they would not allow me to do nothing…” “So you compromised with them? “ “That’s right, my partners a police here… and they imposed the same restrictions on him as well, probably using me to entrap him…” “A police, that’s strange a gangster and a police, governments and corporations, they can be terrible things… couldn’t you disappear?” “ No, we have children… which explains little or nothing, its just the choice we made…” “Yes that is the kind of choice one makes…” I am eating a bit of pistachio halva, enjoying the sweet crunchy texture, I have cut them into smaller pieces with my small kaiken knife, holding the decorative sheaf in my left hand as I slice and cut. I am surprised by the return of the desire for an everyday life. (Still in the quiet sitting waiting, talking hardly anything passing by. Only from then the rigours of my everyday life collapsed. Not that I could push into the crowd, to leave myself. I could hardly walk anymore. I knew that there was electricity. Now it’s different. They drive themselves to all sides of the park. Heads for heads. (And I recognise that I could not encourage myself to go into the crowd.))

“This is really nice.” I say to him. I can see my partner parking the car on the side of the road, illegally. “ What are you doing this evening ? “ I ask the barista. “I’m going to a club, on holland square, serving drinks and coffee. And listen to some jazz….” “Who knows perhaps you’ll be lucky…” I said. “Unlikely, I have got used to being unattractive…” He paused and asked “If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?”

“I don’t know, there are so many places I cannot go to. So perhapssomewherewarm or somewherecoldinwinter, there is a hotel on the edges of the desert, on the coast.. there…. or perhaps Lisbon.” “They sound interesting. Lisbon is on my list, after I get a UK passport… going to see how different it is from Pessoa” He said. I wiped the kaiken knife clean, put it back into the lacqured wooden sheaf and dropped into my bag. And said “… It’s time to pay, my ride has arrived, he’ll carry me home…” “Thankyou it’s been nice talking to a fellow exile and refugee…” I look at him, we exchange cards. I gesture at the man walking towards us. “My partner, is from here but because of me is as much an exile as am, because of me became a criminal, he’s a good person…” He is watching the barista with the care and attention I know so well, and love. “we are all criminals…” The barista said. I stood up and began to limp towards him. I used the katana to support myself. In earshot of the barista i said to him “ your three legged one awaits and says hello…” “You used that as a walking stick…”

Later, some time later I throw myself into the keys of the typewriter keyboard that my fingers caress, a world like into your arms… Much is missing from this, culture, the recognition of the lies, the untruths, tenses, pronouns, names.. Later, some time later you throw myself into the keys of the typewriter keyboard that your fingers caress, a world like into your arms… This was a story of an exgangster and a terrorist — two people who talking walking drinking espresso and waiting. This is how they met, we met perhaps we’ll get back to what this meeting means later…