"If you have enough darkness, will you have enough light?"

(Us, folks, with Sacha, our friend, who provides the model for Jack Horn in the Green Eyes, this afternoon, in Sacha's garden in Les Adrets:) 

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And here are a two corresponding tidbits from the Green Eyes:

(Opening of Chapter 43:)  Every soap has its homme à tout faire, be it James Bond ("Q"), or us ("Jack"). Talking James Bond, if you ever watched the earlier movies (there is a new-new Q now, bear with me), you must have realized that Q’s lab was too small, there was no way anybody could combine a shooting range for war heads with a workshop for poisonous pens with an assembly line for Aston Martins anywhere outside the Pinewood Studios (the newest Q holds court in the British Museum where they have more space).

Talking Jack Horn, if you ever had a look at Jack's barn—he lives in a rumbling farm house outside Georgia Beach with a large garden and a big barn where he “works”—in fact, you don't have to enter the barn, you only have to look at it from miles away—it's like Q's (old) universe, and then some. There are machines, gadgets, toy helicopters, pianos, coloring books of his three lovely daughters, the original camera of Toulouse-Lautrec, teddy bears, the screen wall from Startreck, tennis rackets, entire hardware shops, books even, some of his friends write books. It's like the firm of Clutter, Clutter & Clutter. There it is, climbing the stairs, climbing the walls and climbing into the basement where antique premium cars await urgent repairment: clutter. There’s no way you could spend a minute in this chaos and not come away with the idea that Jack is your man when it comes to hair-brained schemes.



 (From of Chapter 44 (John pursues the idea of blackmailing the local DA (who's in the closet) with revelatory footage shot in John's bedroom):) Let's recall that Jack once took my tentative request for an innocent partnership picture as an insult to his straight sexuality, so I will have to dance around the issues and explain my case as if it were a surgical strike into semantic space, a space devoid of any motives, reasons, or explanations, solely consisting of noncommittal visual gear pointing at my bed, from various angles, everything invisible to the unsuspecting eye, and wired, wireless of course.

"Uhh huuh," he says, sipping his whiskey."So you want a video installation?"
"In a sense."
"On your own premises."
"Yes."
"You won't have much traffic in your apartment."
"Should I?"
"Perhaps you should contact the MoMa for your work."
“You mean the Museum of Modern Art?”
“Yes, they have more traffic. In New York City.”
"I'm not famous enough," I say.
"I worked in Manhattan, once had sex with the secretary of the director. Of the MoMa. Twice. Three times. My-ooh-my. These people know what they are doing. Four times."
"Hiring secretaries?"
"Hiring secretaries." He smacks his lips, swipes his unruly black hair with his fingers. "A video installation, that could be challenging."
"You are the man."
"Thank you," he says and turns to his Startrek display wall that we've mentioned earlier. He ignites one of the screens with a remote control and is on the internet, already surfing from page to page: "Video installations, invented by the famous Nam June Paik from Korea, who also invented the expression Information Highway. Video installations, today ubiquitous and visible in a range of environments...the only requirements are electricity and darkness..." he pensively quotes a Wikipedia page. "You do have electricity in your apartment, don't you?"
"Yes," I say.
"And darkness, how much darkness do you have?"
"Enough."
"Enough enough, or just enough?"
He appears to insist on an answer.

"Just enough," I deflect. He swirls the ice cubes in his glass, resumes control of the whiskey bottle, makes arrangements for topping up my glass. "Light isn't like booze, you know," he goes, and halts, as if he's waiting for something to click.
"Analogies break down all the time," I reply.
"It's a pity," he says, “somebody should do something about analogies. You know, the bottle is half empty, it doesn't mean it's half-full."
(I will lose this, I know.)
"My God, and you are a college professor,” he continues, “If you have enough darkness, baby, will you have enough light?"

I hand him the half-empty glass.
"Or do we need to install additional light-e-ning?"
"I don't know."
"Should they be visible, the additional lights, or invisible?" A smile slides across his face like a beam (of light).
He hands the glass back to me.

Are you still there? Then you'll possibly like the GREEN EYES. The first part is out now, available as Kindle book on Amazon, under this link:

"click"