flights of fancy

My hotel room.

I am standing at the window.

The lights of Dublin airport glittering below.

Hulking iron caravelles line the runways.

What hath God wrought?

Tomorrow I fly to London to meet an Arab girl for a cup of coffee.

It is a temperamental journey.

Flying in.

Meeting her.

Flying home.

Truly God made an artist in me.

Well you know.

I turn from the window.

The ghosts of Sigmund Freud and Thomas Hardy are standing watching me.

Freud is smoking a penis.

Hardy is pensively stroking his beard. (Freud's beard. Not his own.)

"What are you two doing here?" I demand.

They shrug sheepishly like schoolboys.

"I wish you wouldn't keep showing up like this," I tell them. "People are starting to talk."

Freud decides to get to the point.

"Heelers," he murmurs, "is it possible you have fallen in love with the chase? That you can never be really happy with any conclusion to it?"

I weigh his words.

"Well," I answer in measured tones, "why don't you get lost you beardy dead bastard."

Thomas Hardy coughs politely.

"To what serves mortal beauty?" he asks me.

The noble Heelers grins sagely.

"Well for a start it's nice to look at," I answer.

Hardy nods but does not smile.

He may have heard it before once or twice.

Suddenly he draws himself to his full height and begins to declaim poetry with almost savage passion.

"When I set out for Lyonesse," he intones with great feeling, "a thousand miles away, the rime was on the spray, and starlight lit my lonesomeness, when I set out for Lyonesse a thousand miles away."

I have no idea what the hell he was talking about.