The Word Jugglers

By Kim Ekemar

The Last Beat; London, 1966
A policeman walks the empty streets of London Town on the eve of his death from a heart attack. As is his custom, he makes up tongue-in-cheek plays on words while reflecting on the sad state of society. The rhymes come to him to the beat of his footfall and a clock announcing midnight.

From a Critical Point of View; New York City, 1990
A wicked critic writes columns for a daily paper. He finds it more rewarding to criticise by twisting the truth into satire than to produce balanced reports on the artistic efforts he evaluates. Loneliness is his only friend, and he writes for the self-satisfaction by putting down others with his eloquent pen.

The Palindrome; England, 1976
In the exchange of two letters – one begging for human contact, the other refusing it – it is shown that you will reap only what you have sown. The reader’s sympathy is intentionally meant to shift as the facts are revealed. The story has been written in such a way that the events go continuously backwards in time while it maintains its palindrome framework. A palindrome, for those who may not be aware of it, is a game with words that spell the same backward or forward (‘able was I ere I saw Elba’).

Neville’s Daughter and the Genius with the Bottle; Ireland; 1984
Recognition, admiration, village bard . . . all fine words that come with a price. Irish poet Neville thinks more of the sea and his dead wife than the daughter he has lost to city life. When she unexpectedly returns, his life is upset in more than one way. A tragic story in which the destiny of its main character is accompanied by his poetic visions.

The Man the Gods Punished by Giving Him the World; Greece, 500 BC
When a mortal uses his talent to mock the gods in a play, they decide to get even. To accompany his fame and great talent, they punish him with excess. This story is written with a nod to the Greek mythology tradition, although at the core the present-day myths are not any different.

Homage to a Man of Letters; England; 1901 – 1997
Zachariah Abercrombie was an illuminated, creative and verbal man in every combination of the words. This ‘relay homage’ to the prolific scholar one year after his death gives glimpses of the multitasking, word-juggling genius he was. Twenty-six persons, one way or another influenced by him during his lifetime, get their own words about Zachariah off their chest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kim Ekemar
• Release date: Oct 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463725665

Kim Ekemar

I've been fortunate with opportunities to travel the world, counting Mexico, France, Sweden and Spain as my home at one time or other. In the past, a good part of my life was dedicated to business ventures: an art gallery, an advertising agency and commodity trading, among others. My travels have taken me to faraway places and amazing situations. I arrived in Mongolia just as the revolution for independence from the USSR started. I have been taken up the Sepik river by crocodile hunters in Papua Guinea. I've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, gone horseback riding to where the Río Magdalena in Colombia begins, crossed the Australian desert, hiked the Inka trail the wrong direction in Peru, and much more. However, the experience with the most impact that I've lived through was to be arbitrarily jailed in a centre for torture in Paraguay during the Stroessner dictatorship, under the absurd accusation of being a terrorist. (More about this in my illustrated non-fiction book in Spanish about the dictator, "El Reino del Terror".) During the past two decades, I've been focused on artistic expressions – painting, photography, design and architecture, but mainly on writing. The sources for the things I'm interested in writing about are the passions of people; places and customs that I've experienced around the world; and stories or situations from life that intrigue me.

Book preview

The Word Jugglers

by

Kim Ekemar

THE WORD JUGGLERS

Copyright © Kim Ekemar 2010

All rights reserved.

Without the express permission in writing from the author,

no part of this work may be reproduced in any form by printing, by photocopying, or by any electronic or mechanical means. This includes information storage or retrieval systems.

Go to www.kimekemar.com

for more information about permission requests.

Edition: 1910-01

Published by

Bradley & Brougham Publishing House

2010

Contents

The Last Beat London, 1966

A policeman walks the empty streets of London Town on the eve of his death from a heart attack. As is his custom, he makes up tongue-in-cheek plays on words while reflecting on the sad state of society. The rhymes come to him to the beat of his footfall and a clock announcing midnight.

From a Critical Point of View New York City, 1990

A wicked critic writes columns for a daily paper. He finds it more rewarding to criticise by twisting the truth into satire than to produce balanced reports on the artistic efforts he evaluates. Loneliness is his only friend, and he writes for the self-satisfaction by putting down others with his eloquent pen.

The Palindrome England, 1976

In the exchange of two letters – one begging for human contact, the other refusing it – it is shown that you will reap only what you have sown. The reader’s sympathy is intentionally meant to shift as the facts are revealed. The story has been written in such a way that the events go continuously backwards in time while it maintains its palindrome framework. A palindrome, for those who may not be aware of it, is a game with words that spell the same backward or forward (‘able was I ere I saw Elba’).

Neville’s Daughter and the Genius with the Bottle Ireland; 1984

Recognition, admiration, village bard . . . all fine words that come with a price. Irish poet Neville thinks more of the sea and his dead wife than the daughter he has lost to city life. When she unexpectedly returns, his life is upset in more than one way. A tragic story in which the destiny of its main character is accompanied by his poetic visions.

The Man the Gods Punished by Giving Him the World Greece, 500 BC

When a mortal uses his talent to mock the gods in a play, they decide to get even. To accompany his fame and great talent, they punish him with excess. This story is written with a nod to the Greek mythology tradition, although at the core the present-day myths are not any different.

Homage to a Man of Letters England; 1901 – 1997

Zachariah Abercrombie was an illuminated, creative and verbal man in every combination of the words. This ‘relay homage’ to the prolific scholar one year after his death gives glimpses of the multitasking, word-juggling genius he was. Twenty-six persons, one way or another influenced by him during his lifetime, get their own words about Zachariah off their chest.

NOTE: In this homage the reader is challenged with finding a contradictory set of words concealed in one sentence in each article . . . can you find it?

The Last Beat

Stop her! Clobber. Clobber. Clobber. Please . . .! The smell of copper. Police! Help the yelping whelp. Drugs. Mugs. Thugs. Orgies and vice. Morgues full of ice. Grime. Slime. Crime. Time. Time. Time. Perfect time . . . It's very near midnight as I keep perfect time placing one foot in front of the other along the cobbled streets of London Town. I’ve always preferred to work the night beat, when the natural sounds of the city are subtle, subdued, submissive, subterranean. I walk the empty streets and make up these little meaningless rhymes to help me pass the time. Time for a rhyme . . . The rhymes of the times . . . Perhaps not so meaningless, come to think of it. The subconscious extracts what truly entertains the mind, I read in the paper the other day. It was attributed to a famous psychologist. How true. I'm walking these streets – fashioned by time, passion and crime – at what I perceive must be near the end of my existence. Why is it I feel the rhythm relentlessly slow down as I hobble along? And to what purpose did I walk these cobbled streets for forty-odd years? To get my soul badgered by the bad, victimised by the vicious, oppressed by the obscene, or violated by the violent? How can I be anything but tired? I think about humanity – tonight my thoughts embrace it indiscriminately. The vain, insane, profane corps of human beings. One would perhaps imagine that these epithets only apply to the dregs of society, the obvious cellar dwellers in the society pyramid. I know for a fact that by viciousness, greed and violence alone you cannot determine which rung of the class ladder somebody clings to. I hear Big Ben strike once, so it's finally midnight. I observed that compulsive lecher, the XIVth Lord C., strike twice the face of his wife while he accused her of being unfaithful. Then I was noticed and, shall we say, asked to look the other way while he attended to a family matter. The request didn't come without a generous compensation, of course. The cat is on the rat, the rat is on the rope . . . Upper-class, cemented upper lips, brats; getting their pleasures, the cost charged the rats. Lower-class, demented lowlife, yes – rats; living off treasures stolen from cats. Life? Life is deception. Now I know beyond doubt I was deceived on the day I was born. I was brought up to believe that life is a good, honest, benevolent circumstance, occasionally seasoned with errors. The constant struggle for the sake of money is there really only to make things more interesting. Something to talk about over a nice cuppa. After all these years, on the verge of finally getting the truth beaten into me, I find I was lied to. Death is never rejected after a certain age. Life at dusk. Death at dawn. Midnight approached by the pacing pawn. Brawn is challenged by the abrasive brain, consequently slain by the brutal brawn. Big Ben strikes twice, then thrice . . . Life the cat is playing with the mice. The stories of the streets stare back at me. The cobblestones used to be my friends . . . what happened? Their roundness was never hard but soft, inviting, friendly. When they shone brilliant and bright in the light of the lampposts after a heavy rain, the wet glare from the streets cleared my mind of fear. When the sun made them steam and suffer and squirm and yet remained firm they made me realise that the foundation of society will never change. Suddenly I notice the cobblestones ogle me warily. Four, five, six. The bag is full of tricks. The midnight pulse creeps into my lap. There is only one thing in life no one can choose, no one can live without and that kills you in secret but minute steps. Time, of course. I suppose Time really is an enemy to Life. Before life or universe existed, there was no time. From the moment birth of mass and movement and life came about, Time began its relentless work of ending it all. If Movement and Light and Life are the good children born by the evolution of the universe, surely Time is the rotten egg hatched among them. The present is the intersection of our consciousness with the flow of time. Both past and future exist only as mental constructs in present consciousness – the past as memory and the future as imagination. The Big Bang acknowledges this by announcing its seventh stroke. I'm so weary. Physically, mentally. All my senses are weary, but this body I’m pushing around is wearier yet. I must sit down. Hanging on, aren’t we? Hanging on to our nails, guv. Nails scratching hard for a decent life and a pint at the pub. I was there when your back itched, guv, how ‘bout scratching mine? Well, it got the kids through private school, in’t it? I'm too old and tired and beaten on for any more of the scratching game. When old age begins to stumble behind the plough it should make its last effort, run forward and overtake the plough. The next in line takes over and buries the past in the furrows begotten by the old. Thus the old order nourishes future chaos. Nourishment for the future . . . the future. Perhaps my children learnt something from me. The one thing I learnt from my children was envy. Envy for their youth and healthy bodies and curious minds. My spirit can no longer neither stand nor command the flesh it inhabits. I must rest. While my mind orders my physical presence to carefully take a seat on a stepping-stone, my body disobediently collapses against the doorway the stepping-stone announces. I lean against the doorpost and know the end is approaching. It always is, really, but in this case there is not much of the approach left to contemplate. Eight. I always thought that body and mind functioned best if working in harmony. Now, in the midnight hour, they seem to be related in an inverted way. While the velocity of my thinking increases, the beat of my heart slows down. Time is obviously running out, but the effect isn't at all what I expected. Perhaps my intuitive theory about time and space and movement isn't correct, after all. Nine, ten, eleven. Why is it that Big Ben seems to strike slower and slower and slower in a warp of time, and that my heart keeps the time so exactly? Twelve.

From a Critical Point of View

THE UNBULGING IMPACT OF FASHION'S LATEST FAILURE

Gianni Botticelli is the latest Italian name to appear among pretentious fashion designers. Last Friday said Botticelli draped various multicolored garments around a crowd of cloned tall youngsters with an expectation of great applause for his original designs. Alas, John Booths' work turned out to be as authentic as his brand name is badly translated from his real one.

John Booths, aka Gianni Botticelli, was born thirty years ago in upstate New York to his eighth-generation American parents. Judging by his fashion show, the closest he has been to the great European design country is leafing through fashion magazines in Little Italy where I am informed he used to work as a ladies' hairdresser. ‘You steal a little from as many as possible, then throw it together in a haberdashery fashion and it becomes just that’ seems to have been the logic of Botticelli.

His designs are mainly gaudy uniforms fitted for fashion models with no bulges. Since his self-pronounced public is American teenage girls, there is a great gap in the Botticelli logic. American teenagers tend to be voracious creatures bulging in all the wrong places. Botticelli may have to revise his sales strategy.

He may also have to revise his decision to dedicate himself to something as difficult as combining fabrics, cuts and colors into garments fitting young women. Why don’t you judge for yourself by the following examples?

First dress out was a military-style off-purple combine with one red and one blue padded shoulder sewn on loosely. The trouser legs were of different lengths, tightly clinging to the calves. The jacket was straight and striped, with four huge decorative buttons arbitrarily hanging from the chest. I could count up to fifteen pockets of varying sizes, although none big enough to put your hand inside. According to the program it was a design adapted from the uniforms Nepalese Gurkha soldiers wear. No wonder Gurkha soldiers haven't had any significant impact in the history of warfare and even less so on fashion.

Among the more casual wear was a sexless black body stocking which could have come directly from some ninja training camp if it hadn't been for the pink ribbons adorning it. On the belly a bag-like pocket had been attached ‘to keep big things in,’ giving the apparel a distinct look of a well-known Australian mammal. From the waist hung minuscule leather pouches ‘to keep little things in.’ An eclectic nonsense that even a kangaroo would look ridiculous in.

The most anorectic of the models, probably the only one to fit into it, made the thin finale in a midnight blue dress with yellow and orange flames leaping toward the horn-shaped shoulder pads. Although the rubbery fabric resembled a diver's wetsuit, it certainly seemed to make hell for the girl wearing it – she was drenched with perspiration. Well, it does get cold in New York during winter.

All these clothes had the Botticelli logotype stamped on them in big bold letters – the models not being vehicles for presenting the garments, but the garments being billboards for Botticelli. The show was performed on a long narrow raised platform, perhaps twelve feet up in the air, which forced you to look on with your head bent backwards. I suspect the strategy was to keep the audience in a position of awe, but all it gave me was a pain in the neck. The show was accompanied by boring and monotonous