"Compliments — and hats off to you. You can really write. You must have a remarkable eye for nuance, because one can only describe what one has truly perceived. Thank you. I would love to read more of your stories." CSV on Orion

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"I'm impressed by how your language reflects this style." Kornelia F. on story.one

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"An artist makes things known to people that they know without knowing that they know them." William S. Burroughs

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"Don't stop yourself from laughing ... sex is so funny." Wakefield Poole

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"I don't defeat my opponents, they defeat themselves." Helio Gracie

Golden Arabesques

The Orient is a Western invention. Travelers in the 19th century speculated on the stock exchange of their imagination. What seemed like opium to them was in reality a European fever. On November 4, 1849, Gustave Flaubert and Stéphane Mallarmé embarked in Marseille. Egypt disappointed Flaubert, he noticed a simultaneity of splendor and misery.In March 1850, the French geniuses traveled down the Nile in a water taxi.

The sultry longing for the Orient was a revolt against the objective fathers. It was always the same, through the ages. Every classic was followed by a romanticism, every Sturm und Drang - Storm and Stress (a German literature movement in the 18th century) was followed by a boredom of Biedermeier.

Bedbugs caused bloodbaths among the travelers. The travelers took drugs like crazy; what Rome and Athens had been for Goethe, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Damascus was for Flaubert and Mallarmé. Something was brewing between Nana and Stéphane; they kissed each other tenderly. Stéphane was a passionate brothel-goer by nature, a man with peculiarities. During sex he kept his cigar in his mouth and his hat on his head. They visited an institute for ritual hair removal, and the educational travellers undertook a henna treatment. Flaubert fell in love with the table dancer Kutchuk Hanem. Kutchuk Hanem was in the favour of the powerful. Flaubert associated her cleavage with the folds of a monk's robe. In short, he succumbed to Kutchuk Hanem. For Flaubert, Kutchuk Hanem embodied the sexual promise of the Orient. He later corrected himself. Even if the Parisian viewpoint glorified the vermin in the Middle East as "golden arabesques," Flaubert remembered Arabian bugs better than sandalwood and rose oil. He struggled with the inconsistency of his feelings. 

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In a more recent incarnation, Nana saw "In the Realm of the Senses" ten times and "9½ Weeks" twelve times. Sexually, she exists in a visual echo chamber. She surfs on waves of simulation. The lively-looking specimen of a wild cat in her living room, the spacious seclusion of her attic, where someone has already hanged themselves, the sunfire symbol as a woodcut in the camouflaged style of abstract expressionism... Nana's ideas of comfort touch on the conspiratorial. She knows about weapons, can do karate. Her favorite erotic settings have to do with sport. Keyword: Dōjō sex. 

Nana, in the actual version a Frankfurt native with Kurdish-Iranian roots on her mother's side and Hessian-knightly ancestry on her father's side, is a martial artist through and through. She lives Budo. Not a day goes by without training. Nana expands her repertoire in courses. She is the woman in the high-end version of a tracksuit, with the monstrous shoulder bag and jumbo water bottle, who spends her weekends in suburban gyms to learn foolproof knife defense techniques from world and grand masters or other outstanding close combat luminaries. Nana's interest in spiritual gains has evaporated. The intellectual dimension, the educational value, the personality training have become concepts in the fog. Nana is tormented by the fear of missing out on the real karate in Germany. There is no one like the flying tigers in her dreams.

Construction Worker Prose

"A pleasant smile broke over his lips."

This is how Stephan Dedalus, the hero of "Ulysses" and alter ego of its creator James Joyce, sees his friend-enemy Buck Mulligan. The two share an apartment in a former Roman defense tower. "A pleasant smile broke over Nana's lips." 

After a quick encounter, Nana suddenly appears to the poet Branwell as a different person. It means a lot to her that Branwell has the same name as the only brother of sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Branwell Brontë was a gifted will-o'-the-wisp. He had polytoxicomania. Nana snuggles up to Branwell, while her whole being is turned to a true master of manifestation. It is you to whom I give myself body and soul, intoxicated with happiness. Nana liquefies as a touch of power gives her goosebumps. She reacts so completely to what has taken over her that she no longer understands how she could have existed so inauthentically for so long without dying of shortness of breath. An indescribable joy reigns within her. Nana's body is one perfectly stimulated erogenous zone. She does not need anything physical from Branwell. She will fulfill his wishes for a while longer and he will not suspect that he is not the one she is talking to. And so it will continue. 

And yet Branwell serves a special pleasure to Nana. His attention creates the resonance space for the explicit. Branwell may say something poetic only to cover up something grosser, and Nana says the same thing in construction worker prose.