The Criteria for Beauty

Greetings,

"Your bike is dirty," she said when he pushed it into the elevator.
"Yes, isn't it just beautiful," he said smiling. "It loves nature."

"You have the criteria for beauty," said the Chinese teacher. We were going down. Neon red floor numbers practiced subtraction.

Her arms were filled with thin standard brown student exercise books. She'd finished grading them with her sharp red pen. The books dripped blood on her shoes.

"Beauty is it's own criteria, as it's own criteria," he said. The door opened. He followed her with his dirty mountain bike.

She carried the books to the guard shack next to the partially closed black gate. A tight squeeze. Inside, the passive guard was watching bland tame soap operas at a high decibel level. Reruns.

Her students would trek over to collect them. She passed her responsibility with authority.

He pedalled away toward a dirt road in the mountains and beauty's natural criteria. Where he would sit in silence hearing wind sing through evergreens.

Peace.

Call me Vladimir

Greetings,

This is a little difficult to express clearly. Things around here have gotten messy and my report is being transmitted from an unknown location.

My boss in Moscow is going nuts. If this appears vague and mysterious, well then, that's the way it is. When you are in this line of work, reality is vague and mysterious enough as it is.

You may have read, heard or seen, depending on your choice of media, about Mr. L. He passed yesterday in a London hospital. Someone gave him Polonium-210, a radioactive substance on November 1st. I was at the circus that day.

He had tea at a swanky hotel and said he was going to meet someone from Italy at a sushi bar. I have nothing against sushi but, as my handlers will tell you - if they ever talk - we are trained to avoid raw fish.

Now, I know this may appear to be a biased cold war account but, I was not directly responsible for putting the P-210 in his soup. Why would anyone want to ruin perfectly good soup?

Honestly, it was a figurative little man disguised as an inspector from the Wealth Department. He came in through the bathroom window.

His entry, a desperate act of retaliation approved by Big Brother was witnessed by a young femme fatale out walking her pet rat. She and the rat are now in protective custody at a mansion in Surely.

He had access, not me. I know this because I've been dating his sister since Halloween. If she finds out I'm talking to you she'll drop me faster than you can say, "You can always run but you can never hide."

Small traces of P-210 occurs naturally in the body. It's a free radical. The soup stuff originated from a foreign nuclear reactor and is 250 times more toxic than cyanide. A particle smaller than a dust mote can be fatal.

It is easily transported and impossible to detect. It comes in powder or liquid form. It is a small, little nuclear device. It goes down smooth. On the rocks. Trust me on this. Gotta run.

Peace.

MK 29 - new literature

Greetings,

MK 29 is up after dancing with proxies, internet gremlins and spooks.

Ah joy! New books arrived from the Amazon, all 6,448 kilometers flowing through lush tropical rainforests.

Writers you may or may not be familiar with: Harlan Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Henri Michaux, Jorge Luis Borges and two by Isabelle Eberhardt. The "Turn the page" link has specifics.

Isabelle (1877-1904) was a true nomad, cross-dresser, sensualist, and transgressor of boundaries. She traveled, lived, wrote and wandered in the Sahara. She perished in an Algerian flash flood when the clay house she'd rented for her husband collapsed.

Peace.