The Truth Is...

... I don't do much to promote myself. And so, I've decided that starting from today and throughout the month of June, I will be posting snippets from my own work published in books and online.

I start off with a small excerpt from my micronovel "The Republic of Love", published by BluePrintPress in 2010.

In the beginning. It is the fifth of July, exactly six days before I once met Danny. I live in a house with pale blue walls, the colour of sky. The house has many windows, each of which is a different gilt-framed painting, through which I can see beauty if I look hard enough.

            I am reading a letter:

            Tomorrow will be the beginning of your life. Tomorrow you will cross a bridge and embark on an authentic journey. Soon, a man will take you 2356 kilometres away from your old life, in a boat smelling of oil and fish and salt. You will wonder when you will ever step out onto the quay of another port, how long it will take before you can put down the two bags containing all your possessions in the world. You’re finding it difficult to balance the two, to do a balancing act with the two bags: Keep nothing in your left pocket, empty the right-hand side of your brain of negative thoughts, stop the boat from overturning.

            At night, you will both fall asleep together in a small cabin where the wind will blow into your dreams making a hollow sound, a door opening, closing, opening, closing. You will wake up in broad daylight, floating over the ocean, watching a landscape full of lines and wild colours and strange brushstrokes. The earth is full of love and truth, yes, but you know that already, don’t you. You will travel in the right direction. It will feel secure, it will feel natural, like the journey of water.

            I live in a house with pale blue walls and white furniture. It makes you think you live somewhere near the sky, or that you live in a dream. You could never be angry in this house, but you might feel lonely as you walk from room to room expecting to find something which is never where you last left it. It is not a house designed for one person, not even for two. It is large enough to have an entire family of five or six living happily, filling it with love and laughter.

            I inherited the house from an uncle of mine who never married and never had children. He was a dentist. Strange isn’t it, that he made his money from bad teeth, and the only recollection I have of him is this image: him dropping an egg on our kitchen floor, when attempting to make me an omelette.

            What’s that got to do with anything, Danny didn’t ask, when I told him the story...