The resonance of Himalayan singing bowls sustains in your head all week, so the following weekend you return to the farmers’ market. The square of carpet and the singing bowl man’s stand are there, along with his arrangement of bowls, his incense burner, his CDs, but not the man. You circle the market once, hoping he will return, but he is nowhere to be seen. You leave several folded banknotes under one of the bowls and take a CD from the display. No one observes you leaving and the singing bowl man does not materialise.

I. The Vanishing Point: “Here I am, somewhere in Time: Typo Blod, a man devoid of nationality. I find the notion of Time an elusive one. It and I make for uncomfortable bedfellows. But I think I could provide a history of myself, if necessary. At once, I am at London’s Liverpool Street Station bidding farewell to a lover (there is only ever one that counts…”

Liquidambar is a film noir fantasy about reluctant investigator Typo Blod, who is dragged into the world of Edward Hopper’s paintings. He falls in love with ‘Ellen Bogen’, subject of Hopper’s Summertime. When she mysteriously disappears, Blod suspects foul play, but when he finds her safe he realises she doesn’t belong in his world and he cannot take her back there with him. (PDF excerpt)

MUSIC FOR YOUR enjoyment, suggested for listening to before, during and after reading the stories. Some of it inspired or suggested the words in the first place; some of it, with the right mood, may intensify your experience of them.