Tuesday, August 07, 2007

The giant aluminium eggshell

No it's not a plane, though it was originally meant to be a transportation device, with springs as propellers to hop around the planet. However the giant aluminium eggshell arrived one night out of nowhere and painfully landed in the very heart of The Village. Its springs were getting so rusty it couldn't hop anymore, so it landed there, unnoticed, at the back of a building, and there it lay, hidden behind an extravagant flora. Shortly after the landing its sole occupant ventured out in The Village, willing to explore new ways to survive, as he was now doomed to remain there. Melchior, for that was his name, soon found different sources to get all he needed: A grotto where he could connect with other stranded travellers, gypsies, and poets. Some fields where he could find the most beautiful vegetables he'd ever seen. And the unique sacred cafe fountain in town, which would spurt the precious beverage if you were willing to sing a tune, dance a gig, or say a poem for the audience. This is how bards, dancers and poets and their muses became popular at the fountain, as everybody knew the day we'd have no music or dance anymore would be the end of it. Melchior endeared himself to the population, and made a modest living, by carving miniature replicas of the sacred cafe fountain. Once back to his now sedentary home in the aluminium eggshell, Melchior would dedicate himself to nesting. He first surrounded the aluminium eggshell, that was stuck between the back of a building and a bunch of trees, with tall plants and extravagant flowers that would allow him to remain concealed. He soon also introduced some of the local vegetables he was so fond of, so as to have his own food. I can't tell you how he made these grow on concrete, but it is now a jungle. He then spent some time making his aluminium eggshell, now his permanent home, a warm and comfortable refuge. He counselled by telepathy with the best interior decorators available, read about Feng-Shui-backward, the latest craze in home decoration, which consisted mainly in rebelling against decluttering and in regaining your nesting instinct, and found a way to make it work, which was relatively easy, as Melchior himself, like his aluminium eggshell, has an ovoid shape, with two big wheels as shoes, that he puts on when he wants to venture in The Village, and hangs outside the door before to come in. So he just had to arrange everything inside to fit his particular shape. Outside, the giant aluminium eggshell had pipes connecting it to the earth for feeding, cleansing and regeneration, which, it is true, made it look like a plane getting fuel. What potions went through these pipes is a mystery, however I remember one of them was a thick, pink potion that Melchior would press in large quantities out of a noisy little machine and feed into the tank, so as to have enough for the season, as he consumed that one daily. One day the grotto and the sacred cafe fountain had to close, as not enough people were ready to dance or sing for the sacred beverage, so the sacred fountain got rusty too, and finally ran out of service. Since then, in the regenerating pipes connecting the giant aluminum eggshell to the earth, you now also have a dark brown beverage, concocted daily by another noisy little device, that constantly has to be fed beans, for Melchior got the lesson and knows Gypsies are unreliable for dancing and singing for coffee, you never know when those guys are gonna show up, if at all, so he designed this sacred coffee machine that you feed with beans. Now you know why Melchior has those tall, very tall pole beans growing in the little jungle outside the giant eggshell...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

nothing wrong with your imagination, very nice. Gracias e mucho, ademas. rrrr

Anonymous said...

We are forced to assume that the personage you refer to here is named Melchior as a kind of puzzle. Melchior was a sage from Nubia (some wise ass black guy) AND (it gets better) a 18 liter bottle of wine. That's a lot of wine. That much wine, no wonder the guy is wise.

Anonymous said...

A lot of the wise Sufis' best poems were written under the influence...