Dee lay stretched out on the dilapidated couch, oily and paint stained, eyes flickering open. An almost pleasant ache lingered around his temples from the night before, scorched tin foil lay winking at him on the low table, ashtrays, wine bottles, tubes of paint…
He squinted as the bright sunlight found it’s way through the gaps in the confusion of masking tape, curtain and canvas on the studio’s large windows. His mind caressed the vivid dreams of morning as he reached for his cigarettes and eyed the large refrigerator, humming it’s hymn of cold beer and last nights leftovers. Small party last night… He pats his pockets until the sound of pills rattling in a bottle reassures him he hasn’t lost them. He cracks open the childproof top and shakes five blue tablets into his palm and places them on his tongue, he likes the sweet taste and sucks them till they melt.
His dreams have become more interesting since he started his ‘dream journal’ and he opens it before the already fading ghost disappears completely.
The sigil I did yesterday seems to be working already as all through my dreams I was finding money, tucked away in books. One and two pound coins pouring out of an old diary, crumpled notes appearing in pockets. I’d been in a shop with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, trying on weird outfits… an expensive shop. A grey boating blazer with subtle grey stripes with a voluminous scarf of the same material attached. I’d totally have worn it… the scene shifted (or mebbe it was a different dream?) and I’m with my brother and a gorgeous girl with red curly hair and Modigliani green eyes, in fact she looked like a girl I knew a long time ago… she was at a piano in ‘The College’ (again this place, always spend at least part of my dreamtime here, always in small groups of people who are kinda familiar but not). Ally was on guitar and I was trying to explain something about octaves (I know nothing about octaves, I leave that to the musicians, I just shout into the mic and write lyrics!) I wanted her to play an octave higher than the guitar… it faded out after that...
Dee goes to the fridge, it is kinda early for a beer but he’s still half drunk anyway and he can feel a hangover gathering like grey clouds. He pulls a freezing pint tin of Budweiser from the twelve pack untouched from last night and pops it open…
On the easel stands his latest painting, a cityscape in blues, pinks and crimson, the way the light catches it makes it look like stained glass. There are more canvases, scattered around the large square room, radiating light and thick daubs of titanium white…
—————————————————————————————————————————————–He writes:
We are history.
Everything happens NOW!
Mother & Father were wolves.
Pan the European.
Radio Stalingrad crackles… SURRENDER!
Born of Fire,
Bones bleached desert white, in the nuclear winter.
We watched starlings swarm like bees,
Tracers under Union Bridge.
Believe this story when you hear it… Some sailors said.
That before there was land, everything was water.
Fish eventually became monkeys and built the land.
Humans were invented by god and saved by Jesus.
The land became nature and people made centuries.
people remembered god but then killed him, several times!
Everybody knows, the screen stops you seeing.
Climb through the T.V.’s empty soul and set free those little people trapped inside…
The soul is an Eagle, or an Arrow, or just a weightless shadow that dwells within this frame of bone
I remember sunlight and walking down University Road…
Everything is so quiet and still i feel like i’m frozen in an old photograph
lying dusty in a drawer.
become an artifact, immortal, to step ‘Out of TIME’.
Berlin, January 1941
Walter was making jokes in his head… shaking in the boots he’d spent an hour polishing! His uniform was immaculate. Everything he was wearing had been cleaned and pressed from his shorts and vest to the glaring, grinning death’s-head on his cap. His hair was fair and fashionably cut. Shorn back and sides with a fringe which he kept off his brow with brilliantine. He stopped at the mirror for the seventh or eighth time as he tweaked the peaked hat and tilted it just a touch. He was overwhelmed by his own appearance. He looked and felt like a modern day Lancelot. Walter had not joined but drifted into the SS. The black dress uniform and Luger pistol were enough. With his 1st in English he was told he’d be given a job in intelligence with minimal chance of ever being anywhere near a front line. He reckoned the war was pretty much won anyway, and if he had to put up with all that Aryan crap to land a plum job then so be it. The pay was good and the girls loved the SS. How the hell had he managed to be so well regarded? And now! What fate awaited him?
Excitement like electricity coursed through him, lifting him out of his body, looking at the perfect human form from somewhere above himself. Walter was gone for a moment…
He sat on a smooth stone bench in a long corridor. He again checked his watch. His appointment was at 8am, it was now 7.58 precisely. At the other side of the huge double oak doors carved with familiar runes and swastikas was Heinrich Himmler, who, just then, might as well have been Saint Peter at the gates of heaven.
Walter Kluge heard footsteps and the door began to swing open. He rose sharply and snapped upright and soldierly. As the adjutant appeared he automatically clicked the heels of his highly polished boots and gave the roman salute. “Heil Hitler” he boomed. The heavily decorated attendant returned the greeting with the same vigour. “The Reichsfuhrer is waiting Kluge, do come in”. He turned and led Walter across an impossibly large marble floor. Their boots clacked and echoed crisply, Walter made sure his steps fell in unison, matching Himmler’s deputy. A sense of being absolutely alive overcame him. His senses were heightened to a remarkable degree, the red of the long swastika banners glowed like they were lit from within, the smell of leather and freshly laundered wool and cotton were overpoweringly pleasant. After at least 25 paces he reached the massive slab of the desk behind which sat the second most powerful man in Walter’s universe. He looked exactly like he did in photographs and newsreels. Walter could see the dark stubble on Himmler’s chin. The thick, round glasses… “Sit down Standardfuhrer, please”.
Walter sat stiff in the leather padded chair.
“You have been recommended Kluge”, he patted a yellow coloured file on his desk. Walter didn’t move, concentrating on not staring but trying hard to make eye contact when appropriate.
“You are an Anglophile Kluge?”.
Himmler smiled and Walter saw warmth in his leaders eyes. They were human eyes, smiling, friendly.
“I have studied English Reichsfuhrer and speak the language fluently but they are done for. I am an enemy of the English as a soldier of the Reich”.
His reply seemed to further the good atmosphere. Walter was beginning to relax. He felt the warmth of the winter sun which shone through the huge square windows and revelled in the near euphoria of the moment. A feeling of unreality flickered in his mind.
“Perhaps you can have a chat with Mr. Churchill for us?”.
Walter gave a measured smile, keeping his lips firmly shut to prevent him grinning like a fool.
“You are being attached as my representative, and of course an ambassador of our brotherhood to an Ahnenerbe unit… your mission, Kluge, is to find Aleister Crowley and bring him back to the Reich”.
Diary of a Dog Fiend. 