Up

Time crept forward in the cramped, dusky room. The silence was so absolute, you could almost hear the dust draping itself onto the polished faux plywood cabinets. A slight, regular ticking noise came from the corner of the office where the partially dried out leaves of the large potted plant quivered in the airflow that was caused by the blasting radiator. Nobody spoke. Every once in a while though someone’s chair would creek. Søren stirred his coffee as quietly as possible, carefully watching the metallic surface being sucked into the vortex of the liquid. Å, let’s descent into this Mælström… ‘t was the sixth cup of the day already. Søren made a note of that on the appropriate form.

He saw Mette winking at him from across the room. Mette had greasy hair that looked good on her. She also had greasy spectacles and vermillion sneakers. They had gone out one time. He had made a fool of himself. ”The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved,” he thought as he looked at the wall. The 2 o’clock shadow fell just above the one from a week earlier. Søren made a mark of it in pencil. Connecting the dots and... voilà! There you go… Heliocentrism? Not in here mate! I’m the son of modern observational astronomy, Søren thought, but a bad son.

A big pile of documents, stapled together in bundles of four or five sheets, lay on one end of his desk. Søren took one of the bundles and with an experienced flick of his crimson destapler he took out the staples which he then placed in a transparent plastic receptacle. The paper was chucked into a grey plastic bin. After every 20^th staple he made a note of it on his report chart. When he was done, he sighed. Almost a record for this week. Well done Nosferatu my trusty old tool, he thought and glanced over to Mette to see if his enthusiasm hadn’t been too obvious and flamboyant and might have produced what could be considered unnecessary sounds.

The rest of the afternoon was occupied by doing this month’s add & subtractions, the checking of customers’ telephone numbers, to establish a pattern and the Leprechaun file. It was hot in here... Mette’s lips were red and shiny. She had a little golden crucifix dangling on her bosom. And yet it moves... Søren pondered on this for some time. He must have dosed off. The writing was on his forehead: Y T R Ǝ W Ơ Ѭ ҉.

Søren picked up the phone and called the time service. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he always did before putting the phone down. He made a note of the time on his form and got up.

From Now On

Jack’s face looked phthalo green in this light. Meg had her head supported by her two soft, pink hands. What peculiar ring she wore, made of some kind of a white stone, or petrified whale sperm. You looked at it for maybe ten minutes. When your eyes locked, she smiled a silly smile. Complete meltdown in you. Somewhere in the back, Bob and Frank compared their iPhones and all of their splendour, the darlings. A fresh batch of young girls coming into the bar distracted you. Seventeen? About. Danger! Danger! They were laughing and wearing funny knitted woollen hats. Much too hot in here. Zip zap, tip tap toe, dance across the floor, knots and buds, a shadow, smudge, a phantom.

Simone pulling your arm brought you back on earth. This was the reason you all gathered tonight, her dooming departure… an eight month trip to the Orient. My God, you were gonna miss her, no man could tell… Cheers, babe. Olga and Bette were laughing like mad. That was probably the best thing to do too. What the hell! Discussing the state of affairs in the world, and solving them in between two beers. Though blurred eyes you watched your friends laugh. Universal Love ruled between these walls for a night.

Later, you found yourself stumbling to the toilet, where you pissed on your shoes. This made you howling with laughter. When you returned you asked Meg: ‘Will you varnish my skull? Just for fun?’ Sure, why not. Confetti, meat, the pipe dream of a waitress’ smile. Out of nowhere, you invent a piano player and a man in uniform. Where were those can-can dancers?

A cold wind blew outside. You shouted: ‘let’s box up the moon! We have no need for it now, for Lady Luck will shine on our path from now on!’

Celluloid Lives

Eight hours long in a room full of strangers with familiar faces... Eight hours of being subjected to a friendly atmosphere that grew more macabre by the minute. I sat on my chair, locked up with a whirlwind of self-conscious thoughts that grew stronger over time and more and more horrific. I know these people… I love these people... then why can’t I for the life of me talk to them?  

The family had gathered in a little village in the south of the country to celebrate the 94^th birthday of the Madre familias. The woman had fought herself through two world wars, eight Popes and three Queens, and single-handedly raised a family of five children, all with nothing but her husband’s high income and the help of a battery of nannies and maids. Now she was being wheel-chaired into a room to be the birthday girl. We toasted her with a glass of pink champagne. Here's to you, Grandmother... love you!

After I had been sitting smiling in my chair, a diversion was created. The family was summoned into the next room to watch a computer presentation my uncle had made. He had transferred all the old celluloid films my parents had made back in the days when my older brother and I were still young & cute. Films I had not seen for the better part of 30 years. My uncle had put a score under it of music of the time: Sgt. Pepper, Jethro Tull, Van Morrison, Iron Butterfly and the likes. I watched from behind the back of my aunts who were dressed in black. 

And there it was… my youth in 8 mm, with In a gadda da vida blasting through the room. A psychedelic nightmare as well as a soft dream in faded colours. Two unreacheable kids jumping up & down on their beds without making a sound. A walk in a zoo, a giraffe in close up. There I was twirling on a merry-go-round, my face tense, pale, half happy. Laughing birthdays, people mouthing silent messages through the ages. Large cacti in our window sill... my grandfather, still alive, playing the piano in the room with the dark brown cork padded walls. I wore surrealistic swimming trunks while sitting alone in an inflatable orange swimming pool in the garden while all the neighbour kids were playing together in another pool two houses down the block. Different trunks while digging up my grandparents’ garden. All around, my hippy aunts swirled around in India dresses, the uncles wearing beards and straw hats, looking exactly like the cover of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. In the sun... in the sun. My brother tried to set up a folding garden chair, succeeding when the lights went low. The dog slept under the table. Mom had long red hair.

When Life Gives You Lemons

(sorry, Angela, wink.)

Waking Up

Each morning, after waking up and having let existence slowly seep into my being, I strech out my arm and slide open the one curtain I can reach from my bed. Then I sink back onto my cushion and stare for a long time at the tree next to my window, and I notice that the little yellow leaves have once again reduced in number overnight, giving way to the skimpy black branches more and more. Then my eyes fall on the corpse of a bee that has been laying on my windowsill for weeks now… a small but monumental mummy, covered in an ever thicker bluish layer of dust. Little bugger, I think... lying there, being dead, ruining for me another day that has yet to start. My eyes travel back to the tree and the white drops of water on the window pane. The quivering leaves are buzzing in the frame, like butterflies caught in a windshield wiper on the highway. Small fields of colour against the frantic black lines.

The Second Law

The story starts with a description of the scenery. Some trees. Firs. A blackbird hopping from one branch onto the next and back again. The clouds and the effect they have on the lighting. How the rain fell on the dried out earth and the view over the lake. All done in an esthetical pleasing manner, masterly creating a perfect sense of forlorn lives and isolation. But all this was more than made up for in the second chapter with the murder of Mary Barrett.

Give Me That Old Time Religion

[This non-post is a pathetic and obvious attempt to get the boat afloat and have the old posts buried again. At the moment, I can’t for the life of me come up with any new things. Nothing! My mind isn’t even blank: there is no mind. My mind has been drafted, packed up its troubles and went goose steppin' on a long march. But just to get some words out, I reworked something from my bored alter ego on a social media site which name should not be mentioned.] 

I went looking for a guitar today, again. It’s bedlam! I am a Stratocaster Man, but am trapped in a Telecaster Man’s body (or vice versa). If this sounds too perverse, perhaps I should just say that I have this Telecaster fetish. That's right, I’m a Telecaster fiend. I think they are chilly and sultry, hunky-dory, down in the dirt, completely righteous… and I want one. So last week, I went to one store, but couldn’t make a choice. There were plenty of good ones, but none jumped out at me. Only now, after today’s second hunt, I know what the problem is: I don’t like new things (any)… all these guitars were pristine, silky and shiny, and both scratch and soul free. Whereas ‘my’ guitar, my war buddy, my Excalibur, should be broken in and a comfortable old friend who can take a knock or two, someone with whom you don’t care so much about your own appearance, or if you hurt his feelings, a bit like that smelly old drunk on the barstool next to you. Someone with a past and a deep, lived-through soul.

However, unknowing of this all, I went to the other music shop in town today to see what they had. It was an eerie place, silent, with a deathly atmosphere. The guitar store guy came forth. I expected him to say: ‘You rang?’ but he didn’t. After I explained him my quest, he showed me some guitars. The guy made me even more nervous than I already was; he was so slick and smiling. He didn’t look like a rocker to me at all. He looked like a Christian youth camp leader, I thought. I felt so uncomfortable that, after playing a few instruments, I got the hell out.

Then I got wondering… when I say 'Christian Youth Camp Leader', would that conjure up the same kind of imagery world-wide as it would here in Holland? After an extensive Internet search I think it’s safe to say, no it doesn’t. Your typical American C.Y.C.L. looks like Metallica frontman James Hetfield, whereas the iconic Dutch C.Y.C.L. looks like Weird Al Yankovic. The moustachioed Weird Al! Steel spectacles.

However, and excuse me while I make my third power slide through the corner here (and don’t say I didn’t warn you this was going to be crap)… during the search, I came across this beautiful 1969 picture of a group at an American C.Y.C. Or, at least I assumed it was American, judging by the language and feel of the website I found it on. Ross Callaghan, the author of it looks somewhat like Hunter S. Thompson, which proves my point about Christian cool abroad. However, the camp is not America, but Ngaruawahia New Zealand.

Shall I, finally, get to something that could be considered a point? I have taken you far enough I think. My point is this: that bunch of people... those are my people! This is the look I want for my band. This magnificent bunch of sorry misfits & freaks. I’ll be the awkwardly stiff, inbred, wide-eared barefooted weirdo in the middle. And I just know I’ll be best friends with Waldo with his trademark woollen hat! Wow. And look the man on the right. He has a Charlie Brown sweater, you can't beat that! I want one too!

Diary

This one had betrayed the other. And the other the next. The dirty stowaway was brooding in the hold: evil deeds were in the making. Outside, the weather had been foul, leafs blowing through the sky like slate. Somewhere in the distance (in an entirely different book) an accident on a deserted country road. Gasoline and blood on the street; two dead bank robbers. In these pages: cool acceptance in quiet mourning sentences.

A perfectly dramatized fiasco, secretly enjoyed. Days of beachcombing, walking around like a beetle. Feeding ducks, eating ducks. Flat out laughing at the self. Self-mockery, a tedious lull, attempts at self-deception. Unsuccessful, as usual. Folios of calmly rippling words in their pyjamas... until the next lynching. Madness in a fancy dress. Pride in a space suit. How many women does it take to change a heartbulb?

The Four-Leaf Clover Project

The Luck Hunt

Once upon a time, I was a rosy-cheeked young biologist, fresh out of uni and fresh out of work. Society and I weren’t the best of friends, but I wasn’t bothered by that so much. I spend my days making long walks on the windswept Dutch plains, and my nights watching TV. One of the habits I had picked up on those walks was to look for four-leaf clovers, a part of my deep-rooted ironical religious mentality. After some time, I had collected over 250 specimens, which I kept carelessly stacked away in plastic Ziploc bags in a big paper envelope with ‘The Treasury of Happiness’ written on it. That made a lot more sense in my native tongue of course, because originally, it read “De Schatkamer van Geluk” and in Dutch : geluk is the one word describing both luck as well as happiness.

Then one day, in those bleak times of unemployment and aimless wandering, the idea formed itself in my head: what if I’d start an eco-toxo-sociological, wide spectre, research project onto: The Occurrence of the Four-leaf Clover (Trifolium repens) world wide, paired to pollutants, bio-geographical data and the experienced luck of the people (Homo sapiens).

Immediately, a number of locations for field studies sprang to mind: Hawaii, Bora Bora, and other island paradises in the Pacific Ocean. That would be the perfect place to start my research project. Funding, visas, some shots and a sombrero were all I needed to begin my life’s work.

However, it was not to be. The evil-minded Fades thwarted everything by making me employed. For years, I slaved away in several dungeon-like offices, only going home for sleep and a quick stale sandwich eaten from a smudgy newspaper. The weekends were still available for field studies in my hometown, but Operation Shamrock, the global 4-L study was put the cay-bash on forever...

Or is it? Now that I find my employable status once again jeopardized, perhaps it is time to get my sombrero from the mothballs and pick up where I left off. Research projects are all the craze in modern art at the moment, so perhaps there’ll be some funding to expect from Peggy Guggenheim and her henchmen. I’ll start working on my thesis soon. Keep an eye out for me in Nature and the MoMa.

Cat. No. HN1001-1033. c. MSV.

Jack Beaujolais

Eccentric! Wild! Gory! Hilarious!

On an entirely normal, drab day in Sherbrook, Canada, we find ourselves in the dazzling company of Jack Beaujolais, private detective. We follow him around on his cynic path through the city and his remarkable lifestyle. Nothing much happens. There are no inexplicable and sudden events, planes don’t crash from the sky in flaming wreckages, no short-order cooks get stabbed by jealous gay lovers, and no lobster fishers get their hands severed in freak gardening accidents...

Jack Beaujolais, a tough and weather-beaten middle-aged man in his trademark gator boots and Wild West moustache, is on a mission... on foot or in his orange 1971 Datsun 240Z. He goes through town looking for... for what? Anything to stop his boredom and hatred. He finds himself surrounded by idiots and dangerous maniacs: local advertisement tycoon Milo Vantard, freehearted coffee ladies in the local diner Babette, July and Fabienne, and ‘Grand Bob’ Daumier, a politician who will stop at nothing, not even murder!, and his daughter, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. All this wrapped in spicy language, piquant adventures and the enlightening contemptuous, sarcastic, misanthropic, inspiring presence of Jack Beaujolais, private detective.

Order now!

Reduction

Something in me is always aspiring for less and less. Or actually... for more nothingness. Since a few days, I have an Internet connection at home and 180 television channels, and all I can think of is: how to stay away from them.

There you have it: last Wednesday, the Cable Guy came by my house and hooked me up. Since then, in one corner of my former Private Convict, I’ve got a laptop computer, and, within clicking distance, a whole new Universe to explore... be it a virtual tour through the MoMa, or watching badger babies on a web cam, searching for fine new poets, or seeing Brazilian girls throw up all over each other... anything goes.

And then there’s the TV. No longer with the familiar ‘20 channels of shit to choose from’– four weather forecasts, three soaps, six steak knive infomercials, a show about disobedient dogs and a Mexican gentleman giving them correctional treatment, a cartoon for babies, and the rest of the channels is regular advertisement. No, now I have – just for a few months, after which they start charging for all the extra channels – everything imaginable, from Bollywood films, ESPN American football, Arabian news, to the latest HD film premières, classic cartoons, round the clock cooking television, Seinfeld reruns and porn. Four channels of porn, five if you include the gay porn channel. That’s a lot of porn.

It makes me feel like a Færøe Island farmer in New York City... Ned Flanders in Vegas... Muhammed in Gomorrah... Joey Ramone in Disneyland... Winnie the Pooh in Neverland... Eddy Merckx in the Indie 500. All I seek is peace and a reduction of my world till just the things that are fine & beautiful remain. I know it sounds like a chutzpah: with so many people in the third world devoid of access to high quality girl-on-girl porn, or a decent weather radar, and here I am looking for a book to read or cactus to attend to. I’m a freak... an ingrate! (Then again, guilt has always ruled my being, so there is nothing new about that.)

I switched it all off and went out for a walk through the city. Up up and away... into the real world! It was raining and rotting leaves blew through the streets... it was perfect. People outside looked fine... not a trace of depravity or menace, no hidden commercial agenda on their faces, no celeb quality, just good old honest country folk, jolly yokels and wannabees. It felt normal. It felt safe and good. Against my custom of buying everything second-hand and dead cheap, I bought three brand spanking new, very expensive poetry books of some of my favourite present-day poets. It was time I did that. Not all my money can go to wine, whale rescuers and gasoline: poets have to make a living too.

And So It Starts…

Finally, I've got a computer of my own, a blank canvas, a new world, a Universe within Clicking Reach. If this doesn't got me Lost, I don't know what will. Let me do a little wild mumble to celebrate…

That boy, what’s he doing sitting next to the white rabbit?

There was blood everywhere…
So much blood, it wasn’t even funny anymore.

Singing Gregorian chant

Accompanied by Banjo

Poem For My Fish
You live in muddy realms, my friends
Floating spirits in a murky hades
With a jolly string
Of shit coming from you arses.
Et cetera

A Dream
A loved-one was going to die and it was up to me to attend him at his Last Resting Place, literally his deathbed. This was a silver and grey inflatable rubber boat for children.  The goodbyes were very emotional and uncomfortable, even though it was ‘just for now’—the loved-one still had some days to live. Few words were said. It was almost 6am when I woke up.

Black & white photographs of
people who are dead.
Lost loves,
and a tragic soundtrack.
Girls, they laugh…
But cheer up!

Advertisement for General Household Cleaning Fluid: John, Paul, George & Albert!

(Some chuckling can be heard.)