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Many men and women have already spent much of
their lives defining and discussing the term 'postmodernism.'
This text will not be a link in that chain.
Postmodernism
exists - "oh yes!" I won't deny it. It was last
seen in a deserted carpark in Detroit. A little
red Corvette, featuring a handsome she-male giving
head to a Scandinavian professor in virtual science.
S/he is sitting on his laptop and it's all true.
He
sits hunched in a woolly jumper he's had since he
was thirteen. You'll think he looks like a man of
76. Perhaps he can tell you about the war and about
the loves in his life. About the strange things
that never happened to him.
But
now he sits here. All his schoolmates thought him
dead. But it appears that he's not dead yet. Or
not entirely. Or no more dead than the day he was
born. His mother still writes to him - yes - but
he doesn't feel so alive.
He's
been hobbling around for some days now, with a pair
of lungs in a state of contraction. In fact, he
hobbled around the pool in a fancy hotel in Cuba
with his neck in contraction. Something slipped,
he couldn't turn, couldn't look up at the sun. Pain
caused by laughter? He went to the grand, luxurious
concrete complex built for holidaying. Well not
luxurious, not at all. Neon and flashing bulbs.
Lots of girls on the make. Quite charming in its
way, but he did stay out of the bars.
He
wore sandals. Sandals are for profs, apparently.
His scientific associates at the conference went
mad. Plied him with too much rum and seemed like
a troop of schoolboys let out for the weekend. And
they were.
They
all ate a half E on the beach. He threw up shortly
afterward. Admitted defeat shortly after that, but
not before entering the club with them, swaining
around the swimming pool, hanging by the bar and
falling for the barmaid dressed in baggy khaki pants
and a bikini top. She had bee-stung lips he wanted
to suck.
He
returned to the hotel, did the mad passionate thing
as he wheezed and thought of impending cardiac arrest.
He slept with the air conditioning on and woke up
shivering when the first beams of dawn hit his eyelids.
He had the fever and the cold and a terrible bark
emanating from the chest. It dented the holiday
for sure. He mustered on like a brave soul, though
he had some intensifying thoughts about 'living,'
'room service' and 'TV.'
It
was a little depressing to return. The airport was
like entering business school (again) though he
didn't really have the qualifications to get in
(again). It was all ads for satellite connections
and laptops and mobiles and "We'll keep your business
on the right track all the way into the next millennium"
type of sign language. He wheezed and coughed, trying
to keep up. Pouring his olive oil. Wanting to get
back to the source. Go south. Go away again. Go
somewhere else. Change. Change. Change.
He
went down in the garage to get his car. Coughed
again. A tall brunette had been almost waiting for
him. S/he walked over to him and asked if he wanted
some company. He thought, "Who wants to consign
paltry words of science to the paper after that?
I've been lying in bed reading a newspaper in a
hotel waiting to die. Eating cheap lentils, the
toilet suffering the post-holiday trauma of being
completely naked. I don't go out any more. I lie
in bed. I cough. I notice the chill in the air and
think of autumn. Autumn and illness make me think
too much of the past. Fuck that. Let's make art
now. It's a good idea. Get involved with life again.
I'm sure I could come up with something."
And
so he did.
He
invited the lady inside his car and took a few pics
of 'the happening' with his new black- market digital
camera.
Then
he left the airport with a smile and sweaty armpits.
He just couldn't resist the excitement of this experience
and his most vidid urban fantasy was now: To get
back to the apartment and put those dirty images
out on the Net.
Copyright
© 1999 Jacob Ørsted Nielsen All Rights Reserved
Jacob
Ørsted Nielsen was nothing but a piece of meat on
the 4th. of April 1972. Much later in the same country
[Denmark] he edited a literary magazine in Copenhagen
[Zoe] and published comics with fellow country man
Søren G. Mosdal. He is also a member of the music
duo Chicken & Banana, which has brought 'poetic
noise' to the capital residents for years. At the
moment he is striving to maintain a focus on his
last academic paper (upon 1960s 'new-wave' of Danish
poets), but he is ever so often distracted by friends,
his girl-friend, his modem and the daily chimes
from his telephone.
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