Lisa Greenstein 2006

My first choice got tucked between the red velvet cushions at a bar called Joburg, where the barman said he'd run out of juice but could put together something tall and cool (and he did):

Whoosh! High in the sky goes Rocket Max. Showers of stars explode over the Coliseum, it's like a movie. The stick falls back to earth in St Martin's Lane. "This is it," he says to his mind. "This is the real thing. This is my destiny woman." All through the shop heads turn. "Did I say that out loud?" he says.

"Audibly," says Lola. Blushing.

"What do I do now?" says Max.

from Her Name was Lola

I left another copy on the chair of the next table in a burger bar called Royale Kitchen. The waitress (picture Amaryllis with an Afro and an apron) found it, and read it as she rolled cigarettes in the back of the restaurant. 'It's a quotation,' she told me as I walked past to the toilets.

Where I left the other:

Darkness roared with the lion, the night stalked with the silence of him.

The lion was. Ignorant of non-existence he existed. Ignorant of self he was a sunlit violence with calm joy at the centre of it, he was the violence of being-as-hunter constantly renewed in the devouring of non-being. The wheel had been when he ran tawny on the plain, printing his motion on the grateful air. He had died biting the wheel that went on and left him dead. The wheel continued, the lion continued. He was intact, diminished by nothing, increased by nothing, absolute. He ate meat or he did not eat meat, was seen or unseen, known when there was knowledge of him, unknown when there was not. But always he was. For him there were no maps, no places, no time. Beneath his tread the round earth rolled, the wheel turned, bearing him back to death and life again.

Through his lion-being drifted stars and blackness, morning sang, night soothed, dawn burst its daylight from the womb of vital terror. Oceans heaved, frail bridges spanned the winding track of days, the rising air sang lion-flight in wings of birds. In clocks ticked lion-time. It pulsed in heartbeats, footsteps walking all unknowing, souls of guilt and sorrow, souls of love and pain. He had been called, he had come. He was.

from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

Happy birthday Russ!

Love Lisa