THE MAN IN TATAOUINE

Schloop schlop, off to the shop. Sausages, eggs and milk. Flip flap, back to the flat. Put them in the fridge.

I was very far from anywhere once and he was even further. Standing in a long stretch of nowhere near the Tunisian Libyan border. What was he doing there? He was just standing. He certainly wasn't going to find any figs or anything. Maybe he was a North African Harry Dean Stanton, walking off the memory of a woman. Or maybe some Crowleite who got into a spot of occult bother or maybe a Saharan demon some Crowleite summoned. Maybe just some Berber up to something but what that something could've been must've been almost nothing. All you can find is scorpions and sand until the cold night falls and the snakes move around.

Maybe he was an off-roader whose vehicle took a tumble or a refugee escaping national turmoil. To my mind at least, from a distance, out there, he momentarily became Frankenstein's monster. An existential anomaly. A slip in cosmic continuity. I once heard a baby crying far out in the ocean. It might have been some gull but I didn't see one. Maybe sometimes the Universe puts things where it shouldn't and you see or hear something in a place where you couldn't.

I'm grilling my sausages and putting milk in my coffee and thinking of him and feeling glad that I'm me. At least I'm just bored whereas maybe he's scared. I'll never forget how he just stared and stared. Maybe he was wondering what I was doing out there. Maybe he thought of calling out but just didn't dare. Maybe he thought that he was looking at Set. Maybe what I saw was an angel of death.