The Xanadu offer was a deal with the devil. It had first been extended to a pirate who was tired of pillaging. It consisted of three meetings with Lucifer: at each of them, a deeper and darker deed would be cut out of your soul like a steak, weighed, valued and wrapped for transport to Xanadu. This could be an atrocity you had committed; an injustice orchestrated by you; a misunderstanding or a lie not corrected; a love lost to neglect; an unfriendly glance at a child; a mean word hurled at your wife. In the end, once Old Nick was done with you, you’d feel lighter, leaner, lovelier: no longer did you reek of your sins. You smelt almost like an innocent new born or like a book of rules and regulations, or like a dogmatic scholar. But Eros had left you, too: with the other side of your coin gone, you had no more currency. You had to start afresh, building up meaning, one mistake after another, regaining weight, growing fat and foul-smelling again.
#29/100 Days 2011. Photo: drawing by Taffimai: “I Say – You Say.”
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