“We should order some wine,” he said.
“We’re drinking wine,” she said.
“I mean something special. Enough of the Swiss white. It’s all good, but let’s have something great. This is supposed to be an extravagant shopping spree and you haven’t bought a thing.”
“I didn’t see anything I want. It all looks sort of matronly.”
“I told you Geneva is dull town. Politician’s wives,” he reminded her.
“But what about the mistresses?” she asked. “Where do they shop?”
“They shop in Paris,” he said.
“Of course,” she agreed and they asked the waiter for the Carte de Vin.
He looked at it earnestly for a long time and then admitted, “What I don’t know about fine wine is a longer book than what I do know.”
“Yeah,” she said. ” What I know is a short story.”
“Well speaking of,” he said and pointed to a Chateau Margaux. “This is the wine Hemmingway named his daughter after.”
“Which one?” she asked.
“Margaux.” he said.
“….Ummmm duuuuuh. Was she the one in Manhattan, or was that Mariel?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I get them confused. One was the suicide and one was Lolita.”
“Both pretty,” she said. “I think Margaux was in the Manhattan and lived.”
“Nope, I think she was the tragic beauty,” he said.
“Mmmm tragic beauty sounds delicious,” she said
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll drink her… whichever Hemmingway she was… You have to figure Papa wouldn’t name her after plonk.”
And he oredered a vintage that was about as old as that Soon Yi was when she first Lolited Woody Allen, or he Humberted her… whichever way you tell that story.

My last studio Patron called me a few months ago and informed me that my painting is hanging next to a Damien Hirst. I couldn’t imagine why I should care, as I’ve never been a huge fan of his. However, there was this one series of prints he did using Swiss Pharmeceutical design. He replaced the brand names with food names. This one I just altered said, “Chicken”. There were also ones that said, Fois Gras, Steak, Caviar, etc. One should have said Mushrooms. Food and drugs are related for sure and I have always been intrigued by how Swiss pharmacology seems to have grown out of Swiss food science. The whole act of making chocolate and or cheese is a very complex act of chemical engineering and leads nicely to making any sort of drug. It is an issue of being Chinese and making Tea. You put nature into solution and then percipitate out crystals of the compounds you want. It is sort of Alchemy. Though this time not lead, but something like Coca leaves that you suspend in petroleum solvent tea and then percipitate out the purified (what did Sherlock Holmes call it? Seven Percent Solution) cocaine. T being the symbol of Switzerland always seemed fitting to me as it’s less about Christianity and more about T and Tea and TNT and all the permutations that cruciforms have meant to man long before some desert Jew named Jesus started making trouble in the Empire.
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When she’d dried off the shower and hung the clothes upon herself like onaments on a tree she came down to the kitchen and he presented her with eggs and she said,” What the hell is this then? It looks like Jabba the Hut.”
“It’s an omlette,” he said, deflating a little like a balloon.
“It looks like Dick Cheney on crack,” she said.
“Some one woke up on the wrong side of bed,” he said.
“That I’m awake at all is a small miracle… I had to drag your insane ass through half the train stations in Switzerland last night and you kept trying to yodel and buy more beer,” she said.
“Really?” he asked… “It’s all a bit foggy for me now.”

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“It tastes good actually,” she said chewing the first bite and he inflated a little again and said:
“Good news… They got voted out.”
“Who?”
“The Republicans… the Democrats took the House and maybe the Senate.”
“I’d almost forgotten all about the mid terms.. I vowed not to vote again untill the Democrats ran an actual candidate… ” chew chew chew…”How much money did I give to them last time?” chew chew chew “And you were out there volunteering for the idiots…” chew chew chew “Best thing I’ve eaten in weeks,” she said chew chew chew.. “Or is it that I feel I can hold food down for the first time in years…?” chew chew chew.

From Double You of The Library Project.

From Tan-jun of The LIbrary.

In the pisser, he thought he saw the ghost of his father in the mirror, but it was simply his own face which resembled that of his fathers and had grown quite a bit older since he’d last looked at it deeply. Two other men came to piss beside him and he grew fearful and thought, “They are two thieves and they want my money… I’m surrounded…” He was not sure what to do with his new fear and suddenly he imagined the image of Christ crucified… he too had been surrounded in a trinity by two thieves and he decided that the ghost of his father’s face in the mirror would protect him and so he shook his cock and flushed and walked out from the back of the bar where he noticed a small flower placed in a vase on one of the table, glowing purple yellow by candlelight… It flickered and radiated and pulsed at him and when he came closer to it he saw that the petals radiated out from a central idigo Hexagon… like a perfect fortress and he said to himself: “So that’s what the hippies meant by flower power.” And the flower radiated a color of love and so he looked in the dark crowd for his love (and her being Korean in a cast of cheese-white Swiss caused her to stand out and radiate and glow not unlike the little purple/yellow flower. He hugged her emotionally:
“I want to got back to the cemetary,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“The cemetary. I want to see the stone again.”
“We just went this morning.”
“Yes, but now I think I know what I’m looking for.. Or atleast I know that I’m looking for something in the stone…. It’s… Nothing…. Nothing is what it appears to be.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I know… I’m a little fucked up, but you see, here everything means something else, do you see? The stone, you see is something other than stone… it’s like words only words made of stone out of pictures.”
“I think you’re high,” she said. “The Cemetary is closed… Look outside it’s late.”
“But we should go at night… maybe you can read it like runes in moonlight.”
“God you are high.”
“Am I?”
“The stone will be there tomorrow… The stone will be there later… whenever… The stone will always be there. That’s the nature of stone.”
“That IS the nature of stone,” he said. “You ARE SO RIGHT!… you’re brilliant and beautiful.. Kiss me.”
She kissed him and then she gently lead him outside to get some fresh air and they kissed again in the full moonglow and the Cathedral bells began to chime across the river.


Stone from double-you.

At some point in the evening he is leaning over a table staring into one of those ubiquitous circles of soft cheese when someone says to him, “You are looking at ze perfect model of the Swiss nation.”
“What?” he says…”I’m looking at a cheese.”
“You see a cheese,” said the stranger. “I See a perfect model of the Swiss Nation.”
He noticed the brand was “Swiss Knight,” “Oh I get it, the knights of the middle ages.”
“No,” said the stranger. “The defended fortress.”
“I need a beer,” he said and stranger made one appear.
“Do you know the story of the last Romans?”
“No.”
“They came to live here in the mountains at the end of the empire….well here and at the Watican in Rome…It is why they only speak Latin in the Watican and in certain part of the Alps…Romansch..it is the fourth Language of Switzerland.”
“I”ve heard of it,” he said.
“It is Latin,” said the stranger.
“I’d heard that.”
“The story starts much earlier when the Roman empire was in its period of shrinking and expanding and shrinking… the decline…”
“The decline and Fall.”
“It was not so much a fall as several centuries of war and corruption. Like all empires they became arrogant and lazy and set in their ways… but around them ze people were trading and learning from all parts of the world… and the Swiss who were not called Swiss yet, but were the ones who live here….They were particularly clever and mean, yes? The Swiss have a particular capacity for war, it is why they take peace so seriously here. You know everyone thinks of what when they think of Switzerland?”
“Cuckoo Clocks.”
“Yes, exactly, but do they know that the cuckoo clock is also the key to military victory in Europe?”
“I don’t get you?”
“Spring steel make a clock go tick tick, but it is also the key to a very sharp sword. When folded into the hard center of carbon steel you get a blade that is felexible and strong and stays sharp. It is the Japanese trick, but also Persian.. and also Swiss… Spring and Steel makes a knife and a clock and later a gun verk. Ze Swiss learn these tricks from ze east, by trading, by buying, and by making and so The Romans come up the Pass from Italy and they are used to go someplace and take the wine and the women of the willage and ze cows and ze food, yes?”
“Sure. They’re the Romans.”
“So zey come wis a whole legion… 5,000 man and they are met on ze pass by only a few Swiss men with their steel swords … the Romans use bronze, or iron now I zink… short swords… so It is usually told with five men in the shape of a Pentagon, but it could be six in a Hexagon,” said the stranger dumping the cheese wedges on the table.”
“Tell it with five,” he said opening a cheese and popping it in his mouth and washing it down with the beer.”
“Yes,” said the Stranger. “Five… it is the shape of a hand and the four elements plus spirit… so you have the five men: the king who is the center and he has the sword of the center which is the thumb,” The stranger said, closing his thumb. “Then you have the sword of ze West – Earth,” and the stranger closed his indexfinger. “Zen sword of North – Wind,” and he closed the middle finger. “Zen Sword of South – Fire,” And he closed the ring finger. “And finally you have Sword of East – Water,” and he closes the pinky and turns his hand around to show his fist… and these five swords make a perfect weapon.”
“I see,”he said

‘ You see yes, but ze Romans, don’t see this, they see five men in the middle of ze road and so the General says: “Out of the way farmer Cow man…We are ze Roman Legion, Yes? We come to pass and take wis us your wine and also women and food, yes?”
“You are what now?” says the Swiss man… Center- thumb sword who speaks.
“We are ze Roman Legion and….” He goes through it again ans the five swiss laugh.
“Why do you laugh cow man?”
“We think it is funny you announce that you plan to steel from us… It is not the way we do things here. Let me explain. If I were to come to wisit you….Where do you live?”
“Como”
“Let us say that I come to wisit you at the Lake of Como, yes? I would first bring you a gift… perhaps my best wine, or my best cheese, or my best cow… It is all depending, but I can assure you I would bring you first a gift. Have you brought me a gift?”
“We are the Roman Legion.”
“Yes, You say that before, but it is not the question I ask you. I know who you are, but here is the problemm you have… You do not know who I am.”
“You are a cow farmer.”
“If you say so,” says the thumb.
“We are coming through… now get out of the road.”
“You are still not understanding me Como. You are not coming through unless I invite you. If I were you I would try to persuade me with a gift… this is the story I have been telling you.”
“But I am The Roman Legion and I have five thousand men and five thousand swords and you have nothing, but five men,” and the Roman pulls out his ugly short dull sword and announces, “This should persuade you.”
“Perhaps it should, Como. But it doesn’t. I have not drawn my sword and I think it is rude that you draw yours.. Now put it back. We are discussing business here and this is not the time for swords.”
“It is time for swords when I say it is time for swords. I am the Roman Legion.”
“You never get tired of saying this, do you?”
“We shall pass,”said the Roman. “My five thousand say so.”
“You won’t unless I inwite you in.. My five say so.”
“Enough!” says the Roman and he make a sign and all the Romans draw their swords.
“I don’t know why it is,” says the thumb. “That I should have to teach the Roman Legion Manners?”‘

The stranger took the five cheese wedges and formed them into a radiating pentagon. “Look here,” he said. “You see the king take the five men and form them into this shape… Like where the U.S. has the army… no? It is an impenatrable shape… if you get through the walls you are in the killing zone center where all five blades can cut you from all sides of your body, on the outside points, the sword cuts a perfect arc and the Swiss sword is longer and sharper than the Roman… The crazy Swiss don’t so much fight the Romans as they do a Dance of Death… They spin and yell and yodel and the whole time the five swords are spinning and chopping off Roman heads and the Romans can not get through this pentagon shape of spinning steel …the steel cuts right through the armor and the bronze and iron swords.. it is a blood bath yes… In Twenty minutes the five thousannd are five hundred in a route.

They have cut of ze sword arm of the Roman commander and the thumb says, “Next time… WIth the hand you have left, you bring me a present and we will talk about doing business with you. I don’t hold a grudge. I hold a sword… you will hold a gift, or so help me, you will hold nothing. I have one of your arms already Como, I have no use for the other, but I will take it from you all the same and then you will have to come up the mountains next time carrying a gift in your teeth.”

“Great story.”
“So yes, the Roman probably looses the other arm coming back with two legions, but ewentually they are not so arrogant. Maybe they bring a nice Italian wine and so they become in business together with all the cheese, yes? The Swiss have always like war and business, but business more than war.”
“Nothing is just a cheese,” he said, eating another wedge.
“Nothing here is ever as it appears…. the whole country is a weapon. Behind everything is something else.”
She comes over with more beer, “What are you two talking about?”
“My friend was saying that Switzerland is a weapon, or a cheese, or something.”
“Yeah right. They haven’t fought a war in seven hundred years….Ha…These chickens are neutral.”
“Nothing is ever as it seems,” he said turning towards the stranger, but the stranger was gone. “Weird he said.”
“Swiss army,” she said laughing. “What a joke.”
“Well they do have the knife,” he said pulling his out of the pocket and there he saw a five sided shield with a cross in the center. It appeared to him now like a diagram of a perfect fortress. He was starting to feel slightly fucked up.