The Worst Thing Man Has Ever Done

Thank you for your kind and beautiful letter. But don’t write to me about balloons, my friend! Oh, my haunting memories! Hardly a week goes by when I don’t think about this...

It was a warm summers evening in Ostend, Belgium (no, rest ye, this will not be a parody on Dr. Evil's life story)... an evening in Ostend where I had come to for my holiday in July 2010. To see the coast and the place where the old glorious voodoo puppeteer James Ensor had lived & worked all his life. It was a beautiful sultry pre-night and after a hard day of seeing and thinking, I had rested my body down on a delightfully busy but peaceful beach. The sun had just sank in the North Sea, leaving the sky pink and purple, and all over the beach, people were lazy, drunk and jolly. The fin-de-siècle atmosphere was thick that night, overlooked by the magnificent old seaside theatre and hotels.

I lay reclined on the sand to make some drawings or do some writing and close to me a young family had lain down too. A fine specimen of a bearded hippie father, his young, smiling woman in a flowery summer dress and a little girl of four or five playing with a big balloon. All was peace that evening. The girl was playing with her balloon, giggling and crowing with timeless pleasure. She was playing with a balloon...

At one point, a friendly gust of wind blew the balloon out of her hands, bouncing it over the warm sand in my direction. The girl made some excited leaps while she danced over. I wanted to tap the balloon back to her. I had forgotten the sharp pencil in my hand. I had forgotten... There was a small poof, not even a bang, and then a little girl stood right in front of me, her angelic laugh slowly melting from her face as she sensed something extraordinary and mysterious had happened. She wasn't quite sure what exactly. Had I performed some magic trick? Was this a game? 'Guess where the balloon is now'? It must be, mustn't it? The world could not be as wicked & cruel as to killing her balloon. So I, the curly man, must have done something strange that would prove to be incredibly funny the next minute. Where did I hide it? She must have thought something like that. But then she saw the pink rubbery remains on the sand and the awful truth sank in: balloons can go poof… unsalvageable… gone! She didn't begin to cry, no trembling lips. She just accepted that the fun was over and returned to her parents without her balloon.

I was heartbroken. I had stopped her fun. I was responsible. There & then... I was there the night that fun ended... And I had ended it. The parents were laughing at the situation, accepted my stuttered apologies like kings & queens, and could see how sorry and shocked I was. But all this mattered not one bit to my guilt.

This is the most terrible thing I have done in all my life. Worse than all other heinous acts of my life of crime combined.

 

 

 

Four Condensed Letters to a Friend

                                                                         I

I'm excited... Let me tell you. You may have noticed some 'silencing' in me the last months. I have been publicly withdrawing, for reasons beyond my knowledge. All I know was that I felt I had little to share. The words could not connect into transferable language. I wasn't done with writing but I felt I should be writing “other” things, and didn't know what.

Lately, an idea took shape: a new blog! A blog with a single theme: the final solution for my former workplace. An autopsy. My many memories, current thoughts & feelings, loose inspired visions, all that. Dark! Not just the classic and petty everyday hatefulness, but instead a magnificent Inspired Malice! Writing within the defined structure of one topic would do me good, I felt. Furthermore, I thought that, with this writing, I could get rid of some of the worst hatred I have for the place, its dwellers and myself. All this by disclosing scandals and burn the façade of decency down to the ground, to scratch off the veneer of decorum to expose the bedrock of obscenity. And then to try and combine it with the most wonderful types of comedy, poetic wanderings, thoughts and a celebration of personality and language. A High Mass of spite if you will, a dark & decadent play with individuality.

I can see it all before me... there will be straightforward shame & scandal, shocking accusations, all interspersed with pieces of free poetic rambling. Some sadness. The end product will be a Moby Dick of a blog... the story of sabotage, failure, boredom, stupidity, selfishness, coping, salvation... the human comedy. And best of all: the opportunity for me to start writing again, real writing, like E.T. the Extra-terrestrial on his little bike zooming past the moon! Writing with cause & vigour.

For a title, I chose "Apocrief". I guess it translates as "Apocryphal" which sounds more like an adjective while my title is completely noun-like.

 

                                                                         II

Yes, yes… you are right and you are wonderful in all kinds of ways. Let it be stated and let it be heard! And I am too obsessed with the work-thing, which I shouldn't be. It’s a prison. However, in my mind, it's not a job thing: it's an injustice thing that has attached itself on my uvula and it irritates the hell out of me. I can't get rid of it. Perhaps by this writing, I thought; by turning it all into a macabre circus. But you're right in saying it is too dark... so right... and mucho brave for telling it to me straight.

I hoped to turn the new blog into a stairway to writing heaven... to start off with dark and sinister hatefulness and public shaming. And to end with pure, ethereal, love-filled detachment. To write myself away from the anger... and to roll in the dust laughing.

                                                                          

 

                                                                            III

My stories are beginning to crumble before me right away... The evil side of me isn't big enough en the person in me wanting to sing & dance is taking over... So even if I wanted, I could not write that beautifully dark and hateful blog. Shame, isn't it?

                                                                            IV

I don't know if I’m cured as you seem to think... I wanted (and still want) to write as from another personality. A poète maudit, a doomed poet... One who has given up on society. And a completely ruthless man. I wanted to stage a beautiful extravagant show, a sinister act of play ruthlessness. But my personality will not let me... I'm am a doomed poet!

Today I applied for a job as a chamber maid.