At 5.30am, after dropping my daughter off at the ferry to Corsica, I drove the length of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, from the ferry-port to the airport. Almost 7 km (4 miles). I passed the huge display of flowers left by mourners against the sea wall as a memorial to the 84 people killed by a 19-ton lorry driven by a crazed French-Tunisian with a grudge 44 days ago. As the traffic lights were against me I had time to hear the echoes of the screams and feel the thuds and breaking bones within my soul. This world revolves through pirate seas. One is only here for the lessons and adventure and ‘random’ madness proving what it means to be a (temporarily) disconnected soul from Essence.

There were few cars on the road at 5.30 in the morning; but there were a number of drunks and homeless people scattered along the way. At 24C (75F) degrees even at that time it is warm enough to be a dosser on the beach. There was even what looked like a well-to-do couple in smart clothes that were now dishevelled driving a bicycle rickshaw — each with a partially-consumed bottle of wine in the hand as they slid down in their seats, very much the worse for wear, driving haphazardly across the road. How I wished I’d had my camera with me! But by far the largest presence was the vast number of prostitutes who tried to sell themselves to me as I drove at the slow velocity necessary to avoid being tagged by the many speed cameras along the route. I counted 27 in all. Not cameras — women! Actually, I strongly suspect that not all were women; but they all were dressed that way. And so my heart began to break. Some were old and well-used vessels of men’s lechery. Crack! [sound of heart breaking]. They probably weren’t as old as they looked but their way of life as despised receptacles for the wayward semen of marooned and frigid men and no doubt many beatings by mafia pimps ensured they would never know outward beauty again, if they ever had known it. I saw their childhoods in disenchanted homes where the word “parent” was a merry-go-round of inadequate mothers and abusive ‘uncles’. Now the natural product of all that loveless rage (which itself was seeking to be loved in all the wrong ways through fleshly substitutes) was baring itself in a miniskirt and stiletto heels on a promenade by the sea (where only mermaids ought to roam at dawn). Then there were the obvious transvestite whores playing at caricatures of how they imagine women would behave but failing miserably. On some of their faces the makeup had disintegrated into a bizarre clownlike appearance so that in the darkness and strange glare of the streetlights they looked not unlike the horror film character, Chucky, coming at me like a nightmare. Crack! [sound of heart breaking even more]. A number of these women actually looked very beautiful. I’m told that many are from Eastern Europe where the girls have a kind of natural, open beauty — the kind of face you would want to wake up next to every morning of your life… in the right circumstances. Yet here they were on a main thoroughfare in a mafia-driven city earning money for their bosses with their bodies at dawn. To wake up next to that would be a nightmare. Crack! [sound of heart breaking even more]. Some were so desperate that they stepped onto the street waving in front of the car. I had to swerve to avoid them. Oh, you fallen maidens of the early morn! The Knight in me wants to gather you all in my car and set you free in a magic woodland where you will find refuge in kind foresters’ huts; where you will be cared for by those who will restore your faith in other possibilities with people; where you will once more connect to grassy nature instead of concrete pavements; where your smile will no longer look like a razor slash across a wizened mask but like a welcoming entrance for affectionately-playful tongues; where the only blowjob you will do is to puff the seeds from dandelion stems; where your ravaged vulva will become the sweetly-scented flower it was always meant to be — traversed only by loving lances and longed-for babies; where you will set sail determinedly to where you wish to be rather than blown about randomly as a victim on the stormy seas of destiny within this fallen world. If it was within my power to give you all this I would. In the midst of your lessons — your destructive karmic maelstrom — I wish you could taste my tears and feel my love in place of the relentless tidal wave of lust which batters your sweetness into little more than a pitcher for a myriad misplaced seeds from ugly mangled straycat men whose brokenness in other senses now has matched your own. CRACK! [sound of heart completely broken]. Car pulls up and this man keens his yearning soul along the beach into the lively onshore sea-breeze blowing all the odours of the cheap perfume and poisoned bodily fluids into a well-deserved oblivion. I dream of times when every girl will see herself to be a temple into which a chosen man may gently, shyly, lifely, lovely step without a price — with nothing thrusting desperately but just the two together being free, rejoicing in the scent and sounds of love and light and constancy…

© 2016, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]