The Flower II

As summer past, my flower went through gradual transformations. First, she turned sleepy and introspective. She could stay silent for days or talk only by humming, turning off her fragrance. Then subtly, her petals faded to the colour of parchment. One by one she let go of them and, in her heart, grew something that looked like brown diamonds. I looked at her from the corner of my eyes but dared not say anything, afraid of making her feel sorry for herself.

'Voorstelling'

This afternoon, I walked in a warm and calm forest. Not a single puff of wind disturbed the lush undergrowth. Creamy sunlight making tufts of gold on the forest floor, lighting up leaves of brambles and mushrooms. Large patches of the purplest heather blossomed as if aflame. The trees conjured up scenes of the Jurassic, the Cretaceous.

And right there & then… for one amazing, ultra clear unbreakable, indivisible moment, a singular moment, one solid moment where time stood still and the whole cosmos felt as to be existent only in that this here piece of blazing forest, there and then I felt completely and thoroughly happy. There’s no other word to replace the banality with… perhaps ‘blessed’ if it hadn’t those religious overtones… or ‘jubilant’ if the nature of my happiness was not this most intimate, inward joy, for not a smile on my face, nor a song on my lips. Just intrinsic happiness and eyes that shot sparks. This was a happiness of well-being, the absence of danger and universal understanding. I stood still for one moment and observed this bemagicked location, the gnarled trunks, the creepers growing up the trees, the playful monkeys hopping around in the canopy, the lazy bees flying around me and the stupendous colours of the forest, before moving on. *

*Those requiring more authenticity and realism in their stories can substitute ‘monkeys’ with ‘pigeons’.

Nocturne, the blonde

Last night, at 3:30am, a Samuel Beckett play was staged on the street underneath my window. I was lucky enough to be awakened by it or I would probably have slept all night and missed out on this entertaining experience.

A group of perhaps a dozen youths on two-wheelers had come back from a night on the town. Exactly at my house, one of the young ladies had managed, as a lark, to kick off the chain of the bicycle of one of her female comrades. This caused the victim in question to undergo a fit of uncontrollable laughter in a deep hysteric voice as she went over the street on all fours to regain as much as she could of the content of her handbag, with which she had been parted with in her inevitable fall.

‘Hu… huuu… no dude, no… dude, but listen… li-i-i-sten… lis-huuu… I got to, like, huuu huu, my bag is, like… C’me help me now, you bitch. Listen! Huuu. I’ve got to...’ And so on and so forth. Other members of the party had, perhaps unknowingly, slowly removed themselves from the epicentre of the action, but were called on in booming voices to come back and help with the reconstruction of the disintegrated means of transport. ‘Oi, Pete, Pete… Oi, Pete… Pete… Pete… Pete… wait up! Pete… Pete…’ a voice cried out to a distend acquaintance. ‘Pete, Pete… Pete… come and ’elp with the bloody chain, man. No, Pete, don’t be such an...’ But Pete was such an. For the moment being at least. Some members of the company had decided that continuing their journey on foot was the best answer to their predicament, but the loudest, shrillest voice decided against it because of her hunger. ‘I’m not walking… I’m hungry! I’m nót walking… no, I’m hungry! Not walking. I am hungry.’ And she added to that: ‘Hungry.’

In the course of benevolent time–space, Pete, who had come back, repaired the bike and the actors scattered in the night to make merriment elsewhere.

Review of the Art Show

On the clean, light beige floor, a sunflower seed laid. Or so it seemed. A sunflower seed, or pip. Not a berry, nor a bud, no grain, germ, spore or sperm. Closer inspection showed it was a ceramic representation of a sunflower seed, baked in an oven at 1125 degrees centigrade in an engobe wash of white on a dark grey clay base. It was perfect in every way, dimension, and colour, with all the right sunflower seedness it could possibly aspire to, except for the element of Life, the possibility of brood, descendants, heirs, offspring, posterity, spawn, spouting greens and petals flopping about in the Tuscan wind, to end its life nipped by a woman’s front teeth or a parrot’s beak. And, of course, this seed or pip being not of natural but of a human species kind of origin. Human nature. A total fake. A perfect fake…

Right next to the first ceramic sunflower seed, a second ceramic sunflower seed or kernel lay, equally perfect in sunflower seedy replication. It lay on a tilt, casting a vague little shadow on the first of the sunflower seeds, which caused it no harm or devaluation but, instead, only added to the reality of the scene of sunflower seeds and pips. This effect was further enhanced by the object next to these two seeds, for next to it, adjacent and vis-à-vis, yet another seed, pip or kernel was positioned, brushing the second seed or pip but not the first since it was too far removed from the aforementioned seed replica.

Number four of the sunflower seed imitations was a little harder to distinguish as it was partly obscured by sunflower seeds seven and thirteen, about which further information will be given forthright in full detail. But first it is about faux sunflower seed number five we need to talk, which was quite similar in shape, appearance and behaviour as sunflower seeds one to four and it lay on the clean, light beige floor, sunflower seedy as can be. The same could be argued about pip six, as I like to […]

Tomorrow I'll go on... and on... and on.

Reading...

After having isolated myself completely on a well-known ‘social network site’ on three occasions, I recently found myself accepting people and writing snippets on it again. There was no particular reason for it and the writings (or messages) were improvised and in no way attached. Just some loose messages, mostly with nauseating comic intentions, reflecting on the social network itself and the ways of the people. Of course I should not have been surprised most of my choleric shouts received utter silence, yet surprised I was. Some people never learn. I am some people. I will collect a few of the blips here (only three days worth), not because I attach much value to them, but because this is a safe place (in case of termination of the social network site) and their writing will not have been a complete waste of time.

• Not having anything to say is no excuse for your silence.

• People who want you to acknowledge, approve of and applaud their happiness but exclude you from their sorrow or misfortune are not your friends.

• The pursuit of happiness leads to disappointment and depression. Let's pursuit adventure... or some form of interesting depravity.

• The difference between a Romantic and a Non-Romantic is about 300 friends... or 20 bucks.

• Too much humour leads to melancholia. Too much melancholia leads to depression. Too much depression leads to humour.

• Ah sentiment... as long as one uses it with a simpleton naivety, it doesn't even have to sound fake at all. I love you people!

• When someone tells me (for instance in a story) about a one-armed man, my first question is not ‘what happened?’, but ‘which arm?’ I think this says a lot about me.

• Aggressive, ambitious salesmen make me nervous and agitated. This is not logical: the one with the upper hand is I! They are the ones wanting something from me: I should marvel in my power. Same with women who say they ‘have had it’ with sexual advances from ‘pushy’ men. Let them realise they are the consumers in a buyer’s market.

• Amorality looks best in an extremely well-spoken, innocent and polite person. That’s my dream: a well-dressed cannibal who uses cutlery and a napkin. Evil doesn’t have to be banal.

• I’m a spy.

• Working on my Green Bean Spleen Machine. The girl in the Patent Office laughed in my face. Damnit.

• Conformity is the secret of success.

• My new aim in life is doing mischief. Forget about evil… it’s the little things that matter.

• Just mumbling to myself... here in a quiet spot of my own. When I post on center court and there's this deathly silence all around, I feel like I'm masturbating in public. Whereas... I just want to make love to you.

• Gawd... deliver me from my love.

• I started my morning with making some karate moves in the mirror. Very impressive!

• The cacti are sadly swaying back & forth in my windowsill…

• “Razzia Schnapps” how’s that for a band name?

• I like facebook… it’s all part of the discouragement policy we call life.

• Friendship for life… l’chaim!

• Oh it was a beautiful sight! The people fought like animals in there. At least those with a passion or necessity. The others just stood there blank-faced munching on a filet americain sandwich.

• I took a walk in the desert today. It had rocks in it and differently coloured sand.

• People need hardship to feel alive. Some turn long-distance runner, others go camping, women have PMS and some work in an office. I like to watch TV.

• Society is a goose-stepping class.

• To get through life, all it takes is a talent for colonialism.

• Don't you just love my facebook space? With all the portraits of my friends hanging on the wall, some snazzy state-of-the-art emoticon buttons. And then this emptiness in here! That's my specialty. This emptiness was designed by Albert Speer.

• Coincidentally, my disappointment was designed by Speer too. My shame? You guessed it: it's a Speer. My loneliness is a Speer 9000. If I didn't like getting dirty I would not come here.

At that point some people began to protest although the majority remained silent. Next morsels will follow…

Merchant in Drought

Temporarily nervous. Summer’s gone… everything’s gone. Drinking coffee. This morning, I found a torn old half-envelop under my bed with in my handwriting [translated]:

I’m a manufacturer of bell strikes
A merchant in drought
I supply the contours of letters
To the contour-needing powers
Only on credit… it figures

{more}

Do you know those little stripes through the Norwegian Ø?
We make them!

The lustre of gold, and quick(silver)
The shine of beetles, and the itchiness of bugs
I wrote the declaration of independence of protozoans
I’m the vortex direction operative

I don’t know when I wrote it, but it is as true today as it was that night. I must rewrite it one day into something formful… P.S. here’s a picture of my doorbell.

A Flower

If you don't hear from me for a while, that's because I have my flower to tend to. There is one flower in my garden, the sole survivor from the 2013 Sunflower Bonanza Project. It's a sickly little thing that had to be supported by a splint. But it was born at the same moment as the sun and I should prevent the tigers from getting it.

A Viking

I went to the lake again. To live a contemplative life… to watch, and think, and read. In other words: to be a bum. The air was still warm, but the sun had covered herself behind a thick layer of ominous clouds. There were few people there. I took off my clothes and swam half a mile out in the warm gentle water… ‘where stupendous waves rolled in thunderous motion’.  To think that I had not done this in perhaps seven years… swimming under apocalyptic skies in complete joy. It started to rain. I liked it. I was a Viking...

The Lake

As the summer gave a grand encore today, I got back to the lake to swim. The sun was hot and the water looked and smelled like stale vegetable soup with muddy overtones. All over the lake, patches of long strands of viny water plants came up to the surface, gripping the arms & legs of swimmers, much to the delight of some and horrors of many. The water was warm and still. I swam far out, beyond the first buoy and all the way to the farthest buoy. Birds and planes glided overhead, but I was miles below in my own watery world. A guy on a Jet Ski drove by, surprised to find a man in sunglasses swimming in the middle of the lake. He stuck him thumb up smiling and I replied the gesture. I was thinking about my great aquatic friends Huck Finn, Walden’s Thoreau and even Jeff Buckley. I loved the fragrant, dingy water. Back on dry land, grownups played beach tennis and children were yelling. “Ik ben gesteekt (‘I got stinged’) one of them bellowed. It was false alarm of course. The kid had lied.