It's always better in the movies

The weird synchronicities continue apace, often too haphazardly to record. But the transitory nature is also their beauty.

Who would have guessed that Phillippe Vasset's meta-novel Script Generator and Guy Vanderhaeghle's 1873 American romp The Englishman's Boy would both share references to the film-making industry and play on the surreal nature of filmsets?

History is calling it a day. Roman legionaries tramp the street accompaied by Joseph and Mary, while a hired nurse on cap and uniform totes the Baby Jesus. Ladies-in-waiting from the court of the Virgin Queen trail the Holy Family, tits cinched flat under Elizabethan bodices sheer as the face of a cliff. A flock of parrot plumed Aztecs are hard on their heels. Last of all, three frost-bitten veterans of Valley Forgedrag flintlocks on the asphalt roadway.

And who would have guessed on top of that that Vanderhaeghle would toss in a poke at me?

Often when she should had been at work, I would come home from school to find her lying despondent on the couch, all the curtains in the apartment drawn, the place cloaked in stale darkness. If I talked to her, she wouldn't answer; if I coaxed her to eat, she refused.