The Young Eye

My little niece is a great artist. Who can forget the portrait she drew of me with the most befitting of captions: “you are ugly, you are stupid, you are going to prison, Uncle Tijn” (as seen on the left). Well, here’s another champ. With her latest drawing, perhaps involuntarily, she caught all my inner turmoil, brooding angst, dysfunctional frozen smile, psychic screams and glow-in-the-dark black stare… all set off in triumphant harmonic colourful counterpoints of my boyish bubblegummy fairytale panache and my unspoiled belief in high heeled Tink pink pixies doing the Charleston.

(click to embiggen)

All of my imperfections, flaws, ugliness and demonic impulses, I have you to thank for --- for all of my divine cordiality and angelic tendencies, I have only myself to blame.

 

Behold!

On Seeing a Former Friend About in the City

Don't say: 'I used to know him.'
Say: 'I know the person he used to be.'

A Portrait of the Artist as a Spoon

Athena & Telemachus

The question I put before you is: why… why on the Mighty God’s blue Earth would Athena order Telemachus to go out to search for news of his father Odysseus? It makes no sense to me. She sends the boy away to Pylos and Sparta… but for what reason? The story line isn’t logical at all. I’m sure you’ll agree when we see what happens next: Athena then goes off to help Odysseus escape the erotic clutches of Calypso and make his way home to Ithaca. Then She, Athena, rushes back to Telemachus on the Mainland to instruct him to hurry home to Ithaca for the return of his father. He should never have left the place! Or he should have sailed to Ogygia, Calypso’s crib, to pick up his Dad.

Oh Homer… how well you knew the senseless ways of the Gods.

Horse Badorties

This morning, I finished William Kotzwinkle's book "The Fan Man." That's right, the Kotzwinkle... tearjerker hors catégorie of homesick alien dwarf “E.T.” Kotzwinkle! Or so I thought: I learned today he wrote the book after the movie, which is strange; he was probably forced by Spielberg by some evil scheme or something.

Anyway, The Fan Man is a weird and wonderful book about a hippie lunatic called Horse Badorties who makes a sublime mess of his life. Contrary to my custom, I read it in Dutch (under the weak title “Laat maar waaien”). I usually only read Dutch, French, Yoruba and Russian books in Dutch and take the English ones in English if I can get them, but this one moved itself into my hands and it looked strange and funny so I read it.

And for once... for once the translator, Peter H. van Lieshout, got it so So right! It moved like liquid lava, the language I mean; instead of the sawdust and excelsior you sometimes get with translations, especially low-budget ones... For instance the Dutch version of Hunter S. Thompson's "Hell's Angels" I read a few months ago... Awful! [I'm talking about the dreadful earlier translation or adaptation by Adriaan Venema; I haven't read the newer one by T. Heuvelmans.] But this translation was almost perfect. Just one time he translated (or so I can only assume) the exclamations "crap! crap!" with the decapod animal 'crab', in Dutch 'krab! krab!', which makes even less sense. And the translator mistook the made-up 1001 Nights fairytale opening spell of 'sesame' for sesame seeds. But otherwise... châpeau!

I have never heard about Kotzwinkle as an author to be taken seriously but I think we should. A book of high entertainment value with subject matter that will prove unforgettable, I’m sure.

It's a sunny day in the Netherlands... no reason to feel so depressed at all.

The City Poet

Today, I accepted the position of City Poet of the beautiful city of Darlington on the river Skerne. It’s purely an honorary position of course, but one that I will saddle myself with in the stern conviction of the importance of bringing art into the lives of the people of Darlington, as well as for the thrill of the unique challenge of such an endeavour. I haven’t informed the Darlingtonians of the happy news, and don’t think I will. That seems best for everybody.

To Improve the Unimprovable

I have always been fascinated and thrilled by objects and organisms that have reached the end of their evolutionary path, the ones that have found their final shape eons ago and will never really change simply because they have reached perfection. Examples are: the spoon, the wedding ring, the wine glass, the horseshoe crab, the phonograph record, the word ‘no’, the clay flower pot, Neil Diamond, candles… They will remain forever. What’s there to improve on them? Nothing! Perfection on a stick! Sure, some con artist will come along and try to sell you a pink or bio-degradable flower pot, a hep new buzz word or a magic ring… but we should ignore those heinous imposters and marvel at the greatness of the Unimprovable.

To this illustrious family also belongs… the Plunger. Or does it! Today, I found one that is a drastic improvement on the classic model by the addition of a very useful handle! Why hasn’t this been thought of before? Why don’t all plungers have handles? Or Neil Diamond? In picture one, we see on the left the standard, old, troglodyte plunger that gives you splinters and subpar results in declogging the sink, and on the right we see the new TurboPlunger 2000 in hygienic plastic, an esthetical pleasing orange colour and a snazzy omnigrip handle. The unperfectable perfected, the unsurpassable surpassed!

(P.S. An update will follow when the handle comes loose and the suction cup breaks off.)

Declaration

The day has come. I hereby denounce society and all of its rules, laws and truisms: no longer will I play along. “Ah,” I can hear you say… “Ah,” invariably with a smug, tired smile on your greasy, groomed face, happy with yourself for having a quick fix & easy reply to this and not having to do some actual thinking… “Ah… you know that, if you denounce society, you have to give it all up, don’t you? It’s only logical. If you don’t concede your moral sovereignty to society in full, you can’t have any of it. You have to give up subsidies and benefits too, splint your own broken bones…” Oh yeah? Well… nibble my knob, I say! Perhaps you didn’t understood what I was saying. I said I denounced society in full! If I stopped using its benefits, I would succumb to its rules, the unsanitary ‘Put-out-or-get-out’ rule, whereas I said I don’t play along anymore… you dig?

I have capitulated for many years. I have been a good soldier, I have worked and loved and paid my taxes, I have been kind to my masters, old people, children and whales, I have written thick books and poems to loved ones, I have smiled at birthday parties, I have pointed out the flaws of our ways and given worthy alternatives, I have presented new ethics and a poetica… and nothing has made the slightest difference to you. Those loved ones, they never wrote me back and spat on my paintings; society has rejected, betrayed, scammed and denied me, and it has made a mockery of its own farce of a delusional state. It chose to be blind and deaf to its own reported wisdom. It is mentally mortally ill and I can no longer see it ever making a recovery. Beliefs I once held high, are now shooting through the perpetual twilight of my velvety room making a fart-like noise, a zooming deflating balloon in a cartoon.

Despite all your big shiny words about honour and grace, virtue and congeniality, you remain a bunch of aggressive, moronic, hypocrite materialists, too dumb to see through the fog of your own hallucinatory ideas about life, obsessed with your phoney social status and the creation of offspring as if it’s a blessed event… Yes, your ‘bundles o’ joy’, a-smiling on pink lace cushions, shot in soft focus photos, to be send to grannies and cronies, and framed above the couch as hunting trophies… Yeah, those shrieking, fecal-aromatic larvae of yours, they will only fill the shelves with the next generation of dictators, war mongers, golfers and advertisers… to form the perpetuum mobile of the rat-filled trenches of the next Great War.

When Man gives birth, it gives birth to misery, cruelty and wretchedness. Spreading horror over the land. You’re selling TVs to the blind and yet you dear to call me a cynic and deluded for not buying into your mass fantasies, fables and nonsense. And what you don’t understand, you like to call God. Thunder and pestilence, beauty and death. Oh Sinners beware! Faith! There’s a party tonight at the Eclipse Inn… don’t forget to tip your waitress.

So… all bets are off. I will live by my own rules from now on. I will ruthlessly follow my own ideas of right & wrong, religion and crime, and keep score myself. I will lie, cheat, steal, plunder, pillage and rape. I will jaywalk, double dip my chip and stare at your cleavage for an unseemly long time. Henceforth, I consider myself relieved from all my duties. You have had your chance to keep me on board and failed on all levels. In fact: you still have that chance, but I place the ball in your court now. All you have to do is reply to my letters, stop being arseholes and give me a worthy place in your midst. Just one of you… just one of you, to say something nice but once, to me or any other human being… I’d like to see that day. Then, I will gladly play along again… I will listen to your mindless babble, about paella, poodles, street art and yoga. I will skilfully feign an interest and go coochie-coochie-goo over your monstrous prams and gnome-filled gardens.

Thusly spoke Mehujael.

Meanwhile At Home

Chimamandanata

Meet Chimamandanata, my idol. She came into my life one rainy Wednesday afternoon, for just a buck fifty, taxes included. Don't be fooled by her minute size: the celestial powers she harbours are unfathomable! When I hold her in my hands, the whole room begins to vibrate with primordial élan. She's the Goddess of Books, the Lawless & Contradictorians and Unblurred Boobies. Her name meaning "My God will never Fail". Her shiny beads & breasts will tell you I'm not lying. I'm glad I found her: I need someone on my side who's God never fails, because mine does unremittingly. But that's what I like so much about Him… it makes Him all the more real. That and His appreciation of Suffering. Chimamandanata is His perfect opposite. We will be happy together. And our enemies smitten. Praise Chimamandanata!