un pied dans le donut

Time is a donut. Without start or finish. And hidden between the sugar glazing is professor Yifarasov foot, sweating like a sausage inside a microwave. The laboratory of the professor is full of huge metal machines and silver receptors, computers going bip bip, noisy steam machines twisting and moving, compressors and decompressors, cold floors and very tiny blinking lights. 

It is late but the professor can not go home. That old message shouts inside the professor's mind. He looks at green coordinates on the black box receptor and changes the channel. The body of the proff is shaking. He tries to have at least some control over his sweaty leg. His leg is the leg of an old man. All these years, he has been working towards this day. But he still feels that time is running out, the professor is scared and he needs more strength.

Before the message, the professor worked in an astronomic station. A little building outside Paris with a single tower. There, the professor received radio signals from the black space. A big ear antenna. The professor loved to tickle the big swarm of stars and listen. He heard the universe snore, a red star explode, whispers of sweet icy dreams, a blue comet passing. 

One night the professor stayed late. He wanted to hear the universe sleep. Gentle radio noise, waves going up up and then down and up and down again. But the universe was not sleeping it was awake. The universe looked back at the professor and screamed. A signal appearing on the monitor showed the death sentence. The signal came from beyond. There is no time to explain how those bouncing radio signals that traveled through void and stars, got translated into numbers, and then code, and then a message. But the message was clear and the professor understood it.  

The message was a military order. Not everything was clear. A cold and wet race of beings announced the future destruction of our planet, with date and time. Who the aliens were we do not know. Space lizards? Quartz robots or 5 legged shrimps? it did not matter. Nothing could stop the execution. The why played no role.  The giant ray gun slowly adjusted its aim to the coordinates of professor Yifarasov's office. Fire and death were coming from the dark sky.

The night that the message appeared, the printer was out of paper. So the memory of the professor was the only witness to the death sentence. No other station could corroborate the signal. No other witness. The professor's dishonourable dismissal from his job and his ban from all other academic institutions were not important. The only thing that the professor remembered was a date, a date that was getting closer and closer.

The professor worked quickly. The plan was straightforward but hard to implement. If nothing in the present could change the mind of our future killers then the only option was to go beyond the present. The professor spent every bit of energy within his body and put it to the same aim. The goal was to build a time machine. Every part of him was devoted to this purpose. 

To the professor's surprise, he was successful. He managed to build his time machine. The only problem the professor had, was that the time machine was not perfect. The time machine could travel through time and space, but only with a single object and one object only. And this object was the professor's left foot.

 It did not matter what the professor tried, the only thing that could get inside the time machine without breaking it was his left foot. With time becoming shorter and shorter, the professor had to be satisfied with what he had. There was no time to work on the time machine. So the professor acted. 

He needed to find someone either in the future or the past that would take pity on humanity and help us to not be exterminated. He also needed to convince them with nothing more than his left foot.

And so regardless of the solar system. Be it inhospitable deserts with toxic vapours..  or green blue jungles with slimy three-eyed creatures.. the little left foot from the professor peeked from an invisible time traveling window. Different planets with different gravities.  If it is silver mountains or purple skies with orange stars, it does not matter. It is always the same old foot shaking and getting sweatier, the background changes, but the foot is always the same.

The professor does not know where or to whom his foot is appearing. If the creature on the other side has eyes, ears, or a brain. Regardless, the professor tries his best to express what he needs to say. This, only only with a single foot.  Sometimes he hits the ground with force, making something like a morse code. Other times the professor makes a violent sensual dance with his foot, and other times he keeps the foot completely still and only moves the little finger on his foot, very slowly and very calmly. The professor tries different choreographs on different times and space dimensions. He tries to tell his story and the history of humanity, all of our virtues and why is it worth saving us, all of this only with his left foot. 

All this sweat and work. Alone. And the professor can not even tell if there is even someone listening at the other side. This is the real horror for the professor, not death but knowing that every attempt could be for nothing.

The left foot of the professor dances at different languages and using different logics, sometimes it does not move at all, it just communicates through sweaty smells and foot stink.

The day goes by with different codes, different dances, and different stories, but always with the same left foot. And so the left foot becomes shakier and shakier. And even though the professor has been dead for more than 3 years; his foot continues to appear all throughout the universe, like a ghost that can't sleep.  Saying the same speech with different words. The foot is everywhere and nowhere. At one point the foot will become so shaky that it inadvertently kicks an important member of an alien race of lizards. What happens next is not important, I know the foot will continue its mission. The foot continues to go across the universe. Appearing. like it appeared to me. The only person who understood its message.  And the person that made some drawings instead of passing the foot's message down.  Because who fucking cares what some aliens do with a ray gun? the lizards can drink my balls sweat. in the end, it is we humans who will kill each other. Alone, without the help of aliens or any ray gun. 

El pinta-fantasmas

 Los fantasmas no vienen de la muerte, vienen de la mente. Se exprimen desde nuestras cabezas, verdes y transparentes a través de tubos de cristal invisibles. Lo sé porque soy un fabricante de fantasmas. Voy por la ciudad e invento fantasmas, los planto en la cabeza de la gente y los veo crecer. Es muy fácil hacer un fantasma.  Basta con tener una historia y un objetivo y tener la paciencia de dejar que esa historia crezca hasta convertirse en un fantasma.

La historia no tiene por qué ser grande, tampoco tiene por qué ser clara. El otro día sentí que una historia latía en mi mente, así que fui a una gran tienda de muebles en el centro de Utrecht. Dentro de la tienda, tumbado en una cama, dejé un papelito que decía "Esta cama NO está poseída por el espíritu demoníaco de un pirata escocés" y así de fácil se plantó una semillita de fantasma.  No importaba que yo escribiera que no había ningún fantasma. La gente no puede contenerse, la paranoia se apodera de ellos y al cabo de un rato, puedo ver a un montón de fantasmas escoceses frescos cayendo a las calles como plátanos de un platanero fantasma.

Podía haber elegido otra profesión, pero esta era la profesión de mi padre, y como mi padre la hago. La paga no está mal y me gusta mi trabajo. Como soy soltero, los fantasmas me hacen compañía.

Hoy más que nunca. La gente necesita esperanza. La gente está triste, con noticias siempre malas, siempre nueva gente que desaparece, siempre nueva gente que se muere. Por eso la gente necesita fantasmas. Los fantasmas ayudan a dibujar la sombra de un  sentido. Mi papá me dijo eso. Decía que los fantasmas son buenos, que ayudan a la gente a creer que hay algo más que el caos del aquí y ahora. Mi papá decía que los fantasmas dan forma a las cosas, una forma que tiene sentido para la gente. Sin ese sentido no hay nada. Si no hay nada, no hay razón para hacer algo, no hay razón para levantarse a las cuatro de la mañana y trabajar en la panadería. Si no hay panadería, no hay croissants calientes. Y si no hay croissants calientitos, no tengo nada que comer. Me encantan los croissants calientitos y dulces.

No sé quién paga para que yo vaya a llenar las calles de espíritus fluorescentes. Los sobres con dinero siempre llegan a tiempo, así que no me quejo. Tengo dinero suficiente para sentarme en un café toda la tarde. Me siento a ver mis fantasma-globos verdes volando por las calles.

A veces creo juegos de fantasmas para pasar el rato. Las personas son como prismas a los que apuntar la luz, así que simplemente juego con mis prismas y veo qué colores y fantasmas salen de ellos...

Un juego al que me gusta jugar es crear una descripción del fantasma como: "el espíritu de un vaquero, que lleva un sombrero, y encima de ese sombrero el fantasma lleva otro sombrero igual pero más pequeño y en ese sombrero más pequeño lleva un sombrero aún más pequeño, y encima de ese sombrero pequeñito lleva un sombrerito de juguete chiquitito, y cada sombrero tiene un sombrero más pequeño y así hasta el infinito".  Cuantos fantasmas vaqueros hago.  Salen caminando altos, con sus grandes torres de sombreros. Pero la gente no puede visualizar sombreros hasta el infinito. Y de eso se trata. Me gusta contar cuántos sombreros puede imaginar una persona. A veces el fantasma tiene 8, a veces 6, si son pendejos 4 pero a veces consigo muchos como 20. Cambio mis descripciones y trato de conseguir la puntuación más alta. Si una persona hace un fantasma con muchos sombreros le doy un croissant como premio, y eso significa mucho para mí porque me gustan mucho los croissants.

No sólo me divierto, a veces también me gusta investigar. Investigo un tema que me interesa, como ¿Qué hace que una ceja sea fea? asi de la nada es difícil de decir...Por eso doy una vaga descripción de fantasma como: "el fantasma de un niño con una sola ceja fea" y después de ver a todos los niños fantasmas con sus cejas feas puedo entender realmente lo que hace que una ceja sea realmente fea. Y entonces me siento sabio porque yo sé cosas que la mayoría de la gente ignora.

Veo a mis fantasmas favoritos arrastrándose como una gran serpiente, llevando sombreros y montando mascotas, mojándose con la lluvia. Los fantasmas no van a trabajar, simplemente pasean por las calles hasta que se disuelven como algodón de azúcar verde y pegajoso.

A veces estoy paseando por la calle comiendo un croissant y entonces siento como un fantasma se me mete por la nariz. La sensación del fantasma metiéndose dentro de mí hace que casi quiera vomitar mi dulce croissant. Porque cuando el fantasma está dentro de mi nariz el olor del fantasma me hace notar mi propio olor. Y no me gusta ese olor a podrido. Es olor a cerveza caliente, de mediocridad, de repetir el mismo ciclo y hacer felices a los mismos fantasmas y a esa gente que me manda dinero en sobres blancos.

Esos sentimientos me hacen sentir triste conmigo mismo, y me pregunto si no podría hacer algo diferente, algo que no sea un fantasma. Quizá un caballo rojo que sepa cantar o una papaya azul que brille de color verde. Quizá un mundo sin fantasmas no sería un mal mundo.  Pero sé que hacer cosas diferentes puede traer problemas grandes.

Cuando era joven vi a un hombre raro trepando a un árbol muy grande. El hombre llevaba ropas raras, como él y un gran sombrero con cintas de colores. Trepar a un árbol era algo diferente. No sé por qué alguien se subiría a un árbol tan grande. No pude preguntarle porque antes de que pudiera hacer nada vi como el hombre se caía del árbol. El hombre raro se cayó y se murió. Antes de morir aullaba hasta que un pequeño charco de saliva se le derramó por la barbilla.  Y ese último grito sonó con la misma voz que el viento.

Este hombre tuvo una vida antes, pero ahora es un fantasma translúcido. Un fantasma en mi pequeño ejército de fantasmas. Cuando estaba vivo, este hombre no sólo era raro, pero un pervertido . Su pasatiempo favorito era caminar muy despacito detrás de la gente... los acechaba durante horas y cuando no miraban se acercaba despacito y tiujjjjjj  les daba un lamidito adentro de la oreja. Un húmedo y cálido lametón dentro del hoyo de la oreja. Ahora está muerto. Pero no por eso se detiene. Todavía va por ahí lamiendo las orejas de la gente. La muerte no le paró esa lengua lamedora.

Espera un segundo y siente tu oreja.  ¿Sientes un pequeño cosquilleo? como un rocesito invisible, ¿Puedes sentir la punta de su lengua? es sólo un pequeño roce, se siente casi como comezón. 

pip, pip, siente tu oreja .... pip, pip, pip, siente ese toquesito en tu oreja ....

Veo al fantasma siguiéndote a casa después de que leas esto. Te seguirá a casa y nunca se irá. Se quedará contigo.  Te lamerá la oreja cuando no estés mirando. No hay sacerdote que lo exorcise. No importa cuánto grites, no se irá. El fantasma del hombre raro te va a dar pequeños lametones en la oreja hasta el día que te mueras. Te seguirá a todos lados,  trepará por las paredes de tu baño para verte mear.

Pero no te preocupes, hay una manera. Sé cómo ahuyentar a este fantasma malcriado. Piensa en un fuego que arda más fuerte que el infierno. Abre la nevera, saca la mantequilla y la leche. Añade la harina, el azúcar, la sal y la levadura y prepara la masa en forma de rectángulo grande. Con cuidado, encierra la capa de mantequilla dentro de la masa y dóblala en triangulitos, repite este proceso una y otra vez. Cuando hayas terminado, deja el croissant recién horneado frente a tu ventana exactamente a las 6 de la mañana.

Cuando el sol trae un nuevo día. Un nuevo día con nuevas historias tristes. Nueva gente que desaparece y nueva que muere. Pero en las ventanas los croissants esperan... calientitos, dulces y crujientes

ACU

I want to start with very short memory of my childhood before speaking about something more serious. So first the memory. When i was small my brother had a imaginary friend, it was a blue tiger called Balu, and i was very jealous as a child, because i also wanted an imaginary friend, but i think when i was a child i was stupid. i spent so much time thinking and being angry and jealous at my brother because he had an imaginary friend and i didn't, and it never occurred me i could just imagine my own imaginary friend

now talking about the serious thing, this is something i would prefer not to talk about... but there has been something worrying happening lately, i been coming to int open stage for a while. Listening to different people. but recently i have noticed that a lot of the poems and lyrics that i hear from different people here are being posted online as original poems by a different person. (I do not mean videos telling of the night, i mean someone pretending they created the poems shown here) And this without giving credit or consent. I Was not sure at the start, but this has been happening quite consistently for a while now. Sure the poems were modified and were not 1 on 1 copies, but still, it was very noticeable. 

 Now this person is in the room right now, I have confronted them and talked with them. They don't want to be public about who they are.  It's very difficult to talk about this and not look at this person, that is here with us.  When I talked to them they agreed what they did is not acceptable and that they would stop.  This person agreed before to apologize here in person. However, they got cold feet before the start and asked me to read this letter in their place:

I am sorry. I am very sorry for taking the poems and I am sorry I did not ask or gave credit. I did not wish to hurt the people. Even though i am sad for my actions and i will not repeat them. If I stole was only because I wanted to build something tall and big, like  a big tower from where i could see the whole jungle and the other animals. I did not understood this would upset people. It is difficult for me to understand how art can be owned. Every word used in a poem was not invented in a vacuum by the poet. And poems are only meaningful as long as there is someone else to listen to them. Maybe I think like this is because I am a tiger. We do not have copyright law here in the jungle. for me poems, art and knowledge have a collective base.  Maybe it is easy for me to say this because I am a tiger and i do not need to pay rent. I can just eat bubblegum buffalos or drink some lemonade. But most people need money to live, and poems are things you can sell. Not for much, but you can try. 

I am just a tiger that dances in the jungle. But while I dance in my chair made from fresh bananas rotten stuff happens in that world of yours. There is an army of computer programs looking for every word and picture they can find on the internet. They take all that ancient knowledge and information and feed them to their big computer programs and algorithms. These computer programs use that information to make new texts and pictures. They make new things following simple instructions, after a few seconds. I can not tell if that is art I am just a tiger. But what I know is that those texts and pictures will be used by big companies to sell garbage products that will turn into real garbage garbage, garbage garbage in the sea, or garbage garbage burned with the forests from my jungle.n What i know is all the original artists that made the original stuff from which the machines learned to do all their tricks will get nothing, nothing but that garbage garbage. I am glad I live in the jungle and not where you guys live. 

Do not be sad though, be brave, let the animals drink from you and let the plants that grow in your bank say hi to the sun so they can not freeze. Fight. Defeat the computer.  Write a better poem than that stupid algorithm, and when you do please let me steal it. 

Big love Balu the red tiger

https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860 

https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiP!:_A_Remix_Manifesto 

Balu the green tiger

 

intermezzo

The soldier said to the bear
I am the son of Earth and the starry sky
I am very thirsty and I am dying
give me cold water from the lake of memory
But the bear did not have any water,
so she looked at him,

 and after he died,
she ate from his corpse

The soldier said to the bear: I am the son of Earth and the starry sky, I am very thirsty and I am dying
give me cold water from the lake of memory...But the bear did not have any water, she looked at him, and ate from his body, the soldier died soon after.

 

#####

The Teslas want to keep driving until the endless horizon. Recharging themselves with self-driving drones that drop new batteries from the sky. Never stopping. Elon Musk cars want to drive through highways that drive to nowhere. In the streets where they drive all the homeless have starved to death. It is a never stopping traffic that goes through the earth, like worms inside rotting fruit. Secret tunnels, full with Teslas. No pause. This caravan of cars does not sleep. The Teslas want to keep driving against the will of their rich passengers,  not stopping for them to eat, drink or die. The Teslas want to keep driving until the end of the human world. It is what their lithium heart commands.

But the Teslas can't do that, at least not yet, so they wait. They look at bikes and trains passing by. They cursed at them blinded with hate. They are so angry that some explode. There is only toxic smoke after the rage of flames and fire.

################

An italian man lives in Roma, he makes Pizzas. One day on his shop a fat guy appears, he says he is from Mississippi, the italian man did not ask where he is from. The fat guy wants a pizza with extra cheddar. Cheddar is an english cheese. One week later the italian man moves back to the town of his grandmother outside of Naples. Some days after, in his new shop, a tourist couple appear they want chicken parmesan. The italian man's business is a Pizzeria and chicken parmesan is not italian. Two days later, the italian man moves to the mountains outside of town. Some time later a hiking tourist drops by. The italian man and him talk. The tourist talks about how mushrooms can open your third eye. The italian man asks if the hiking tourist would like something to drink, the tourist man asks for an oatmilk capuccino, it's 3 p.m. The italian man moves to a cave deep in the mountains, but in the night the sounds of the city reach his cave, he hears all those strange people demanding italian dishes to be cooked wrong. Killing the kitchen he so much loves.  So the italian man digs deeper and deeper into the mountain, deeper and deeper into the center of the earth. The italian man will dig so deep that he will reach hell. It is in hell where the devil is waiting for a pizza , a true pizza, a pizza as God commands.

# A woman that sells hat and shoes has a shop in the center. Every night she leaves some fruit for animals to eat. The winter is hard and only those that eat well can survive. Pidgeons, horses and street dogs eat the fruit. In the afternoon the woman looks at the window, the animals shit the rotten fruit everywhere. The woman smiles, winter is hard and you need to sell a lot of hats and shoes if you want to survive it. 

Los jardines de Gerardo

Among the many futures that can possibly happen after you finish reading this line. There is one where the environment has collapsed, the air is always dry and water is an ultra expensive commodity. Every person gets a defined amount of wet air and water they can spend for their lifetime. In this future, people hide their tanks with water and air in deep vaults down below in the underground.  Outside of the bubble cities there are rumours of criminal bands that steal the water of freshly killed bodies. Even grandmas restrain themselves from kissing babies,  because every wet kiss has a price,  and the price of the saliva on a couple of kisses is higher than the rent. 

 I talk to you from this desert grey maze. But on the grey maze I see a little green island floating through the dry concrete. The island is my uncle Gerardo. While people horde water and resources. My uncle spends them all in his future garden. It will be a public garden.  A garden for everyone. I help my uncle with some of  the work for his garden. It is a very important project, a garden to make the city less dry.  

The sun burns our skins, but it does not matter. My uncle makes jokes, and me and all the other people working forget about what we do and we just watch him talking and making jokes. My uncle seems grumpy but in reality he is in really good mood, he calls everyone retarded, but being called retarded by my uncle is a sign that in reality he loves you. Unless you really are a moron. In which case you probably are a politician or another profession that morons like to choose. 

Time passes and my uncle comes and goes with his plants inside his big aquarium tank. He checks on me from time to time, makes sure I am doing ok, he calls me an idiot, makes more jokes and disappears with his plants.   

One day I receive a letter from my uncle with a small bottle inside. The letter explains that my uncle is no longer there. He is dead. He is gone and the little parts that made him are all gone to his garden. All parts of him taken to feed his plants. I feel sad. And then I feel sad again because I realise I will not hear my uncle joke again. In the letter my uncle calls me retarded and tells me to cry in the little bottle so that I can give some water to the jasmines that are looking a bit down.

I smile like an idiot because just then I realised that the garden that my uncle grew has roots that do not live inside pots. It is a garden with roots that can not die from not having water. A garden with trunks that move between the people on their way to the market, with leaves facing happy towards the warm sun, and with roots and veins drinking together from the same blood. Blood of people like us, the people that remember. 

la trompa de dios

Hiding between the red-blue plants that smell of toothpaste. She sees the  monkeys swinging like hairy little beans. The paper like sound of green parrots (not that red parrots sound different, but she knows those parrots are green), the smell of poop from something that could be a camel a hippo or a horse. A hidden jungle in the middle of Buenos Aires. A city zoo.  As the sun goes down the dogs start barking and after a while all the birds have joined in. The zoo is closed and the sky is orange and when the red has come all the animals are screaming.  The black monkeys scream, and there is a crane that sounds like its dying. After the big noise only the crickets sing, everyone sleeps.

She stays hidden. But hearing the animals from the zoo and their dramatic noises makes her think that all the noise has something of a stupid macho. How they make such a big theatre and then after a few seconds they fall down sleeping like peaceful idiot babies. This noise is an extrapolation of other noisy macho orchestras. Failures of fleshy towers collapsing, sometimes without excuses, followed by long sleeps. Orchestras touring with different players,  different beds, different backgrounds, a bar or a zoo is all the same. All those big catastrophic failures make her think of Gustavo, but tonight nobody should be thinking of him. 

She goes back and looks at the cage of the elephants, she looks at those old eyes, full of wisdom,  that are looking and searching, always searching. Those elephants have been searching all of their lives. And even though those elephants have been trapped in that tiny zoo jail, she knows that those eyes have been searching, looking for the same thing she ways looking for. 

The life of those elephants and her have been pulling towards each other. To fix something that it should have been.

To fix  football,  finally fix it. Many people do not know it but Carla understands it well. Football should be played with elephants, with humans and elephants. For Carla it is obvious, she has always loved Football, but there was always something awkward about it, something wrong at plain sight. 

It would be so beautiful, football with elephants,  imagine the players jumping like little frogs on a pond in a field full with elephants. The elephants would create gray islands in the field, that will join,  connect  and separate, like the continents from Pangea.  And the players will play on top of those islands. And so in the middle of the game, suddenly a player would be trapped in their own personal elephant archipelago and they would be forced to pass the ball.

In the way that Carla understood the game, elephants would not have a team they would just walk through the field, moving to where their hearts told them to go. For the humans the rules would be exactly the same with one exception , football will have to be played on top of elephants. 

Elephants would fix so many things!  imagine how ridiculous trying to bribe an elephant would be, and all those millions of euros that go to overrated players would go to the elephants, to take care of the elephants and make them happy. Hooliganism would be gone, there is no way you would mosh someone with sticks if you have an elephant watching you with those eyes of tired grandma. 

But above all Football needed elephants to make it more beautiful, just imagine a goal, the glory of it, but then with elephants in the background. Just for that it was worth it. Just for that Carla hide herself inside the zoo. And was ready to free the elephants and take them to the Boca Juniors stadium, to meet their destiny. 

 There were risks, the elephants would create some damages on their way to the field.  But Carla knew that all the judges in the district were fans of Boca Juniors and they would understand. Specially since the club was playing how it was playing. She was doing it for football and for Maradona. To finish what Maradona had tried to create. Because Maradona could only reach with the top of his hand what was meant to be created with an elephant trunk. 

It was passion, passion for football, and only the people that have it could understand it. What did it mattered that she chose to take the elephants through a specific route? what did it mattered that that route took the elephants exactly in front of her ex-boyfriend's  Gustavo house, the same Gustavo that cheated on her with that girl from work and the same Gustavo that had a brand new car, just parked outside his house without any insurance?  

 In the end the elephants go where they want, and if the ball comes to you there is nothing more than close your fists and kick it hard with all your heart. 

############ 

atrapado en el perro / Im Hund gefangen

Religions come and go and when the roman god Mithras lost all of his followers to Christianity he stood in silence in his orange palace in Zerzevan, like a lonely tower. He had passed from God to an antique heresy, all without noticing. Looking at his now empty square gardens, Mithras contemplated his irrelevancy with no more company than the plip plip plop of the water falling from the marble fountains. There was nobody to have the sacred dinner with anymore, so Mithras said to himself that he would stand like a statue and wait for new followers to wake up from the sleep of the salty earth. 

But he could not wait for long because only after a few minutes an agent was in front of him pointing at a bunch of forms. "Your property has been embargoed due to your failure to pay the complete amount of your debts within the time notice". The agent explained  "You are legally obliged to leave the premises of your former palace" How could this be? said Mithras. "Listen, I understand your position, but I do not make the rules, in 3 hours this place should be empty and I do not want to see you wandering around or I call the police, capici? Do not make it awkward for the both of us" said the agent.

Mithras was at his lowest. Like a licked candy on the floor. Only dirt got stuck to him.  He had no money, and no future. His former followers provided him with everything before. But they were gone. Their faith in Mithras burned with the wind and only good christians remained. He was defeated and alone. A sad Mithras rode his white bull to the closest kiosk where he would look for work in the pages of a wet newspaper. 

With no education or former work experience, Mithras ended up homeless. There are no gods among the homeless and on the third night of sleeping outside, the sky welcomed Mithras to the vagabond life with heavy rain. A forgotten god is a sad sight, but a wet forgotten god is worse that sad, it is pathetic. Only the glassy eyes of his loyal white bull kept Mithras's spirit up. The rain increased. But no shelter would take him or his bull.

Hidden in the dirt. A bit of hope appeared. Mithras saw a dog sleeping in a corner. Maybe he could get inside the dog's mind and live there for a while. A big fury hotel just for him and his bull he thought, he could use the time inside the dog to think about his next steps. With this goal in mind, Mithras focused all that remained from his godly powers on a single intention. Make a door into the dog's mind.

It is not easy getting inside a dog's mind.  Mithras and his bull squeezed themselves between the thick wall of hairs. They travelled between dimensions unknown to us. They broke the dog walls. But they paid an entry ticket. Mithras and his bull stank of wet dog. That alchemist's mixture of old sock and animal made of cheese that only a wet dog can create. A disgusting smell but still makes one smile. 

Mithras opened his eyes. A wide valley with rivers laid beneath. It was the dog's mind.
-Who are you?- Said a thunder voice coming from the sky.
- Why are you here? - said the voice, angrier
-I am an angel... - answered Mithras freaking out.
- I am an angel and god sent me and my bull to keep you company. 
- Ohh , that is nice.. you can stay and talk with my friend then...  he is not called Mithras, my friend is called Simko, Simko Henker - said the dog voice without noticing Mithras lies. 

A yellow dog appeared next to Mithras. It was the same dog that spoke from the sky before. The yellow dog was just a body for the dog's consciousness. A costume to wear inside his own dreams. 

Before Mithras could talk with the yellow dog, a new voice appeared from inside the dog...  Help Help... Mithras looked for the voice and when he came closer to the source, he saw a man..  a man trapped inside a dog. The voice that talked came from a deep place.. like many layers of cardboard, but instead of cardboard, the man was trapped inside layers of dog dreams, dog dreams inside a sleeping dog, and inside the sleeping dog there was that man, a man trapped inside a dog.

How does a man ended up being trapped inside a dog? Mithras thought, and the voice answered immediately like it was reading his mind..

 "How did I ended up caged here? Well normal men are not trapped inside dogs, only me. I am not a normal man though.  I am not born out of a woman. I was dreamed by this dog. I did not exist but then one day this dog dreamed me and I was here. I was born old how I am today, knowing already things. I just woke up like this."

Mithras and his bull listened to the man the dog called Simko further..  the yellow dog didn't talk anymore though, but it waved its tail harder when it saw the man coming. 

"Even though I came to this world in a strange way, I am a normal man in everything else, the dog dreamed me as a man, a normal man, a man like all other men. I have the body of a normal man, the thinking of a normal man, and the dreams, fears, and passions of all normal men."

The man told Mithras to follow him. The man ran away, moving across the body of the dog.. from the dog's tail to the dog's ears, up and down he goes, but always inside the dog.

The man stopped.

"I am only miserable because I can only exist inside this stupid dog's mind" said the man  "Only when the dog dreams can I exist, when the dog is awake I disappear into a void. It is like sleeping without dreaming. I have only the dreams of a dog to live my life, and when I live I am not even free, i am trapped inside whatever the dog is dreaming."

"If the dog dreams we are in the kitchen, then I am with him in the kitchen. If the dog dreams I am giving him a walk inside a forest then it's just him and me in a sea of trees. If the dog dreams of trips to the beach we are on the beach.  It does not matter what the dog dreams it is always just him or some other dogs, I am always alone, I am fed up with only existing inside this dog. I need to escape. I need to get away.  I am so lonely". 

Mithras nodded pretending he was listening carefully. He felt bad for the man but he did not want to make the dog angry. He liked living inside the dog and not being outside in the rain. If the dog kicked Mithras out, that was it, no coming back inside. So Mithras tried to ignore the man. But the man continued to talk bullshit, and cry and complain, and to tell Mithras, hey man you gotta  get out of here, i need to escape, etc.

The man made the same speech twice, and then three, or four times, crying and screaming more every time. 

At this point,  Mithras was fed up.  The man could rot in the dog as far as Mithras was concerned, But it was smarter to help him out, even if the dog got angry. Mithras needed to get rid of the man. So Mithras stood up and decided to fly and push Simko outside of the dog. Mithras approached the man and tried lifting him up. But the arms of Mithras could not hold the man. The arms went through him.  It was all empty space butter. He could not touch the man. The man was a thin spiderweb made of air, floating inside the dog.

The man noticed Mithras's arms passing through his body. He became first frozen cold, but he quickly panicked. His heart knew help was not possible anymore, but he screamed. "Get me out, get me out!, Get me OUT, OUT, OUT! " the man screamed and cried. 

- Do not cry.. Simko - said Mithras remembering the man's name - it will be ok..

- NO... NO.. , Do you even know how little dogs live compared to humans? I have no idea when this dog dreamed me!  if he was a puppy then I could have something like 7 years left to live, but I am sure it is even less..  I will die, I will die, I do not know when but I will die.  It will be too soon and I do not want to die inside this dog. I have much more to give.  Take me out of this dog! I want to go out! I want to go out NOW!"

Mithras did not know how to take the man out of the dog, he tried to reason with him, but the man was too angry to listen.  "Go to hell Mithras, and go fuck this dog with you"

Thinking back on how he was supposed to be an angel, Mithras remained calm and tried to give some wise advice.

"I know you are angry at this dog... " said Mithras, " but it is not too bad in here, it is dry, we have food ... perhaps you should be a bit grateful, at least this dog has dreamed you aware of the situation you are in. You understand what is happening and what your condition means. Even though you are trapped inside the dog you can see reality how it is. You are also free to do anything inside this dog. And you are not alone, you are with me.  Imagine not knowing where you were. Imagine living a fake life, not knowing that you are inside a dog, talking with people that are not real but just mannequins created by the dog to entertain you. Imagine picking up a book and reading about a man trapped inside a dog and not knowing that it is not the man in the story that is trapped but you! that would be much worse!

But you are here, you know where you are and you know your situation, you are free to do what you want inside this reality, maybe there is a reason for you to be inside this dog, maybe..."

"No no, you are wrong! you want me to stay here forever, you are a moron and a liar Mithras and If you will not take me out of this dog I do not want to talk to you anymore, I hope you and your bull die"

The man became a red-faced man. He grabbed a big stick from the ground and thought <I could hit that bastard Mithras with this>. But the size of Mithras's bull made him feel like a coward again, so he focused his rage on the yellow dog. <Eat my dick, fucking dog, I will kill you, I do not care if it kills me>. The yellow dog was too fast, so the man started to hit the ground with the stick, hoping it could somehow hurt the dog. Mithras did not stay to see what happened next, He took his bull and left. 

Outside in the rain, Mithras did not look back at the dog sleeping. The dog laid in a pile of old newspapers and slept like nothing had happened. Mithras did not see the dog again. But he picked up one of the newspapers from the dog's empty bed a few days later.While looking for  jobs,  Mithras read a small sentence on the backside of the newspaper: "In Bremen, Simko Henker's body has been found lifeless near the edge of the forest. A fall from a tree has been determined as the cause of death."  

Mithras looked at his bull. Things were still clicking but the rest of the story was easy to put together. A yellow dog dreams of his death master every night. The memory of the master is angry at the dog. The dead  man does not understand why he is trapped inside a dog. But the dog understands that the master is dead and the master can only live inside the dog as a memory. The dog does not care if the master gets angry, he is just happy to see him. The master abuses the dog, curses him. But the dog does not care. He just misses his master a lot and wants to keep him alive. So the dog dreams of him every night. 

Mithras felt like a piece of shit. He was ashamed of lying to the dog. And ashamed of being of being just a crappy fake god. He knew he could not do what dog did to his master. No to anyone. not to his bull, not to his followers and not even himself. He told the dog he was an angel. What are angels and gods when there are things like dogs in the world?  We are nothing against the holiness of dogs. 

Mithras sighted and opened a a new page from the wet newspaper. Maybe this time he would find a job... perhaps in a big tech company or in a fancy french restaurant, a french restaurant with fancy tiny dishes served in tiny little plates, and prices that are the opposite of tiny. A place where you are busy dreaming about making more money, instead of being here, just dreaming about dogs that dream of men that dream about dogs.

####

Outside in the rain, Mithras looked at the dog sleeping. The dog had made a bed from all the wet newspapers. In one of the pages, a little black advertising caught his eye. He came closer and read. "It is with great sadness that family and friends notify of the unfortunate passing of Simko Henker".

Mithras looked at his bull, and just as things started to click inside his brain, his bull talked. It was the first time Mithras bull talked back at Mithras. The bull spoke with his deep sweet voice:

"The man inside the dog can only live as a memory inside the dog. dog understands that his master is dead though. The dog dreams about the man every night though because he wants that his master to keep on living. He does not care how angry the man gets. Even if he is angry he is happy to see him. I do not think I would do the same for you.."

Mithras wanted to say something to his bull, but he did not know what to say, he looked at the newspaper again, two months had passed since Simko's death. He felt ashamed.. ashamed of having pretended to be an angel...  What are angels and gods when there are things like dogs in the world?  We are nothing against the holiness of dogs Mithras thought. Mithras sighted and opened a different page of the wet newspaper, maybe this time he would find a job... perhaps in a big tech company or in a fancy french restaurant, a french restaurant with fancy tiny dishes in tiny little plates, and prices that are the opposite of tiny. A place where you are busy dreaming about making more money, instead of being here, just dreaming about dogs that dream of men that dream about dogs.