my "trip" started when borsky asked me whether I wanted to join the MLA meeting in paris and I spontaneously decided to go. I didn't know anyone but the MLA context and borsky's mails somehow made it ok to grab the bull by its horns and book a flight. bumping into synchronicity once again, the fates sent me news of the traces du sacre exhibition. the mother spider nodded at me and I knew all was good and the way it should be. ahoi paris!
yet when I was finally sitting in a café close to st. germain and waiting for godot, a lingering demon of confusion raised its ugly head. nobody arrived but a cryptic message from a "flyphone". were flies observing me from some illuminati lookout in st. sulpice? was I being tested by titans in long white robes? an hour later two extra-ordinary entities stood in front of me and there was a flash of instant recognition. very extra, definitely not ordinary, borsky and fly took me and my luggage under their wings.
settling down at another café I got immediately drunk (the sun! the beer! the words!) and prop made his synchronized entry. finding out we knew some of the same people just added to the overall effect of right time right place right company. we continued on our way to the medical garden where we encountered french pizza, ghosts of sunbeams and fuzzbuddy who for some reason arrived alone because other entities I didn't know yet had trouble getting on the train. another strange non-local experience: the "others" weren't with us, yet they were. borsky had the mysterious smile of someone who knows that everything happens the way it should be. looking at his pictures now I see all of us being very relaxed about the general course of things.
arriving in malakoff yielded another pleasant surprise: we weren't greeted by burning paris suburbia rioting but by a nice street and nicer lodgings, which looked like a barn from the outside and provided open, illuminated maisonette spaces inside. being a girl despite myself I spent a lot of time going through my bag and spreading stuff all over the place until both aries and capricorn calmed down and I could join the group at the table where the boys were having continued conversations about stuff that didn't have to do with stuff. light but deep. I dropped another pound of feathers and lead and produced my bowmoring egg of entry.
then we were off to st. germain again, meeting chris, bogus and b-kane at the shakespeare & co. I was happy to finally get some visuals, audio and sensory perception to the names heard before. dining on something which might have been pizza again right by the seine I slowly crawled into conversations, asking low-brow questions ("how is stoke-on-trent?") and trying to get into the general vibe of five guys who hadn't met in a year and had a lot of things to share, inside and outside jokes, and a lot of personal memories of RAW. as a newbie I sat and listened, occasionally connecting the dots, occasionally throwing in my own two pence or cents, marvelling at how much at home and relaxed I felt in between people I hadn't known a day ago. the night went on with a lot of glowing insights for everyone (I think). thanks to fly attending to our spiritual well-being I couldn't communicate in words anymore but enjoyed a warm flood of visions and perceptions. then the spirit grabbed my hand and flew me into bed. the last thing I saw was a mushroom-shaped cloud hovering above the table.
the next day borsky brought a huge bag of perfect french croissants and bogus, fly and I went to find the traces of the sacred. I usually go to museums alone (nobody is into checking out the 10th statue of dionysos as much as I am), and I thoroughly enjoyed the company this time. talking with bogus about christian imagery and buddhism in front of steiner's angel and devil figures and hearing fly resonate with Nietzsche and ideogrammed mushrooms (inscribed with the heart sutra), made me reach out and transcend my standard observational patterns. when we danced around "the proposal for a new model of the universe" I grew wings for a second. I flew so high that I missed the original crowley tarot cards at first, but fuzzbuddy sent me back and I found them next to anger's lucifer rising, a film a friend had just given me on dvd (synchro, ick hör dir trapsen).
that night I managed to remain awake longer than my two room mates and I didn't see mushroom clouds but many other things which can't be put into words. when I left the next morning for orly I had a quick pang of loneliness, until I boarded at gate 23 and knew that the spirit hadn't left me. so I took a bite out of it and brought it back to berlin, where it helped me fight a train full of drunken stag nighters who tried to steal my soul. they had no chance.
I was - and remain - very happy to have made that trip and met all of you and I hope to see you again, soon. as for next year, I'm not sure whether I have the "right" to make a suggestion, but I think berlin would be more interesting than ingolstadt. maybe I can talk the hoff or crowley's spy spectre into doing a hermetic tour for us.
thank you, shiny knights and white rabbits of the high table, and keep rocking the interzone!
OK, here’s my current list:
