Lance Olsen - Head in Flames

You accumulating into you.

And then that stopped.

The Dutch, Ayaan non-sequitured, seem to me to be nostalgic for something that never existed, but whose loss they keenly feel.

Remember this time—

I tell them: I want my pipe and I want my brother .

Theo sneezes into his jacket sleeve: agh-HOOOO .

Remember this time you will move through it.

Sweating, Monsieur Vincent attempts turning onto his side.

Gezondheid .

It’s like snapping a photograph of a vista along the roadway and then slipping back into your car and leaving that spot forever.

In the end—

That evening Ayaan and Theo decided to make a sequel to Submission as well. It would address, among other topics, the abuse of homosexuals in Islamic cultures.

This spasm of convergence.

One function of art perhaps being to take reality by surprise.

I’m a Hollywood writer , someone once noting, and so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain .

November second: 11/2.

In the end we shall have had enough cynicism and skepticism, Monsieur Vincent responding to Monsieur Pissarro on the banks of the duckshit green Oise that spongy May afternoon, and we shall want to live more musically.

Noticing the lights at the intersection ahead are with him, Theo speeds up inconsiderably.

112: the number for emergency services throughout Europe.

Dwelling in liquid architecture.

August 29th: the film airing on the talk show Summer Guests . In its wake, nothing happened.

A poet.

Someone’s hand badgering me.

And then nothing happened some more.

Faggot blue T-shirt faggot striped suspenders faggot gray jacket faggot tattered jeans.

Shoo.

Holland simply rolled over and fell back to sleep.

The absence of unexpected things all around you.

Shouldn’t there be a single word meaning homesick for the land of colors?

Per usual. Cf.: Heinrich Heine.

Here he—

My brother stacking the paintings I bestowed upon him through the years one atop the other in Papa Tanguy’s bedbug-infested spare room above his art-supply shop.

After Submission was made, Theo never saw Ayaan again.

A quick inhalation and you step from the doorway mount your bicycle wobble forward it begins.

I’d like one more Monday, if I may.

After an especially productive session, the Vietnamese tart Tam telling Theo the following story, apropos of nothing, while the filmmaker dressed:

The effortlessness surprises you.

Look: Monsieur Vincent appears to be having some difficulty catching his breath.

Once upon a time, there was a husband and wife, who for years believed they shared the same soul, then slowly came to hate each other. They parted company, yet could not push each other from each other’s heart.

Amsterdam opening for you.

Monsieur Vincent scrawling in paint on the walls of Gauguin’s room later that night: I AM THE HOLY SPIRIT! I AM THE HOLY SPIRIT!

Seven months on, the couple reunited, realizing in the intervening time an important certainty about life: love is a choice you make from instant to instant.

You watch yourself riding.

The lettering so large, stridently green, it caused Monsieur Vincent’s back teeth to ache.

On the following morning, the heretofore-undetected aneurysm in the wife’s neck burst and she collapsed to the floor, dead, as she stepped off her treadmill, at 34.

Angling through the hodgepodge throng.

We shall not attempt to remove the bullet, Doctor Gachet declaring somewhere beyond my Vincentness.

Let us call her Lieke.

Petting the handle.

There is no necessity.

Let us call him Leif.

Dear brothers and sisters my own end is near—

The little house on the street corner: yellow of butter with a garnish of green shutters and door.

This is how the world comes at us, tart Tam theorizing, pink feather tickler stroking black gloved hand.

But this certainly is not the end of the story .

A painter being a man too absorbed with what his eyes see, and so I believe I shall go blind for a little while.

I’ve never made but one prayer to God, and a very short one , Theo quoting Voltaire to Ayaan as they parted that night: O Lord make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted my request .

Believe in nothing that can’t annihilate you.

Keep this object like a treasure , Monsieur Vincent advising as he passed his severed left earlobe wrapped in newspaper to Rachel, his favorite prostitute, the one who wore no makeup, at the Arles bagnio, on Christmas Eve.

The first woman, her beetle-brown eyes filling the screen, speaks: O Allah, as I lie here wounded, my spirit broken, I hear in my head the judge’s voice as he pronounces me guilty. The sentence I am to serve is in your words .

Believe in me.

It is January. It is 1889. The non-stranger with the bandaged head trundles down a frozen road on the outskirts of town, a pack of teenagers dogging him, taunting.

The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication: flog each of them with a hundred stripes; let no compassion move you .

They will write about these things.

Blue irises.

Two years ago, on a sunny day, while on the souk, my eyes were caught by those of Rahman, the most handsome man I have ever met. He suggested we convene in secret, and I said—

— yes says the whore yes young naive and in love perhaps but we thought Your Holiness was on our side we shared affection trust a deep respect for each other how could you—

A good painting, I want to say, being equivalent to a good deed.

— how could you disapprove, and why?

You have entered your own so-called experimental film.

Hands are propping me up.

Our bodies our canvases.

The second whore she says—

When am I?

What shall we paint today?

— When I was sixteen my father broke the news to me in the kitchen you are going to marry Azziz he is from a virtuous family he will take good care of you but once—

It is June. It is 1889. Monsieur Vincent is sitting straight-backed at the little table in his cell at Saint-Remy, eating his oils off his palette with a spoon.

— but in my marital home my husband approached me, and ever since I recoil from his touch, am repulsed by his scent, even if he has just had a bath. O Allah, most high, You say—

— men are the protectors and maintainers of women because you have given the one more strength than the other .

He finds his encounter with midnight blue almost humbling, given the large black lozenges it produces in his field of vision when he lets it melt on his tongue custardly.

I feel at least once a week the strength of my husband’s fist on my face .

The third whore speaks she says Once in a while I sin I fantasize about feeling the wind through my hair or the sun on my skin at the beach .

A certain aching enlivens the center of my chest.

Humming to himself, Theo catches sight of a dark shape swooping in from his left.

Steady.

The death animal, respiring.

Across the breakfast table, Lieuwe: Dad, seriously, you stink just like a human—