The Wait.

For the third time this week, I sit by a window at Cafe Goethe whilst a dark pedestal fan carries out sentry duty. Students of the Institute, occupy the pavement between classes but when the break is over, and the pavement empty, there is an suffocating quiet, a quiet, disturbed only by the propeller beat of this oscillating fan. I am waiting.

Harvest Time

A warm, brisk, breeze blows across dry, paddy fields carrying with it the smokey stench of dead rats and the smoldering ruination of shredded, rices stalks. Old men swing the sickle in timeless rhythm whilst the less experienced gather up sheaves to be hauled away, two by two, from the fields by foot, cart or boat, prior to being threshed at some designated collection point. It is late May and the Harvest has to come in.

Fisherman Paul

"Moin, Moin!" said Paul in a deep, gutteral growl through his beard and whiskers; his fisherman's cap leaning lopsided over one ear. I waved as he continued, "Na, wei geht's?" "I'm good," I replied, "so, Paul... what's got you dragging me out of bed at 3 am in the morning?" "The fish Bettina, they're glowing! You've got to see the fish!"

Two Minutes

"Two minutes is all it takes, to cross the bridge of welcome." droned our guest speaker from the dim lit podium at the front of the restaurant. It was another JCI event and I'd just dozed off. It was only two minutes, but it seemed like the passing of generations, one REM stutter after the other.

Like Name, Like Nature

It was the height of Summer and I was on the wrong side of a long line of drinks lying empty, on the bar of The Saxophone. Her name was "Sweaty Pouch." Names... they are beguiling things, names; rarely suiting the mantel of those who wear them, yet! Never has there been such a case as this... of... "like name, like nature."

Demise

They crawled over my office space like bugs and worms devouring every morsel of office document in their path. "Bloody Auditors" I thought, black bag men for the Tax Department. "Our hard earned tax dollars being put to good use" - exterminating small business startups - Corporate governance gone mad, intolerant of anything outside a multi-national framework for the future of our society. A society of drone laborers, fuelling the coporate machine, individual private enterprise a fabled myth, extinct, like free speech, self-determanism, individual liberty, and evenhanded justice. Alas, they have found my worn copy of deBono's "Handbook for the Positive Revolution." They look at me like some terrorist... The jackboots are coming.

Beginings and Endings

The maestro took the stand and with a soft voice filled the hushed silence that waited with anticipation. His words as clear as the tinkle of a crystal clear stream in some early morning mountain air, words spoken with a quiet but firm resolve, that held us in awe and stunned confusion, "There is a time for beginings and a time for endings, but who can say where one can be differentiated from the other, for all the time we have is... now!" The last word rang out like a shout as the first of a thousand micro-metorites ploughed through the sky and into the auditorium. Few, like me, survived. The apocalypse, foretold by a thousand generations, had finally come.