VII

I met a man on the bus once. I introduced myself to him and explained that I was on my way to visit my daughter in the provincial town of D. He looked at me with a piercing gaze. The look on his face was peculiar but very hard to describe… it was as if he saw something he had never seen before. And the weirdest thing was: his look made me look at myself like I had never seen something like this before. As if everything was completely new. The man never spoke but smiled and nodded.

VI

I met a man on a winter’s night. He was leaning on the rail of a bridge and looked down in the canal with a dismal expression on his face. I asked him if he was alright. ‘Oh yes, never been better…’ he said, ‘I’m all alone in the world…’ There was something about the way he had said it, it had a kind of musical quality to it.

V

I met a man in a bar. He sat on a chair, a simple, wooden chair.  He was busy writing. ‘What are you writing?’ I asked him. The man looked tired and restless. ‘I try to write a story without murderers, lepers, hustlers, psychopaths, alcoholics, ghosts, look-alikes, mongoloids, possessed ones, homunculi or baroque adjectives,’ he said. ‘It is about rain falling on rooftops.’

IV

I met a man in the forest. He sat on a chair, a simple, wooden chair. ‘Why are you sitting here?’ I asked him. He smiled. ‘This is the place where pigeons fly themselves to death against the tree trunk,’ he said. ‘That tree over there, to be precise,’ and he pointed to a large fir tree. ‘Why do you want to see that?’ I asked him. ‘I prefer seeing the improbable over the impossible.’

III

I met a man on the train to Istanbul. I had put my hat on the rack above our heads and I looked down on the man in his rather outdated suit. Just to make conversation I asked him whether he had heard about the recent turmoil and rebellion in the Turkish capital. ‘No, Sir, I have not, and I do not care. I don’t want to hear about things connected with the now,’ the man said in a soft voice. ‘Tell me about the smell of the earth, and how the stars are slowly rising above the spruce forest… about human cruelty… about a long journey over the sea, the oars and wave action... Russian songs. There is just no value in what you try to tell me.’

II

I met a man in the library. He was reading a book on chess pieces through the centuries. I recognized him as the obscure writer V. who has written a small volume of realistic stories I liked. I was glad to see him for I had always wanted to ask him this one question. And that was why he wrote in a foreign language and not in his mother tongue, which was also mine. ‘How could I! How could I possibly write in my own? It is being plundered and abused all day long around me! Imagine a world where people communicate not by the spoken and written word but by sounds made on a violin. Now imagine how a violinist – a musician you see –feels when all day long, people do to their violin what they now do to their language…’

Nuclei I

I met a man once on the beach, where I had come so walk my dog. There was nobody else there but us three, for it was late in the afternoon on a cold autumn day, and the tourists had long left the island. The man had sat himself down on a great boulder and he looked out over the sea. I hesitated to disturb him, but I was curious what he was doing here. I decided to ask him about his beliefs. He sized me up for a minute and then said: ‘I believe what this rock believes.’

On Leaving Facebook

Part 2. Back To Reality

I have done it again. Yesterday, I terminated my presence on facebook again, the place I loved to hate. For years I had, to say the least, an ambiguous relationship with the place and its dwellers. There was a minute part I liked & valued and this I refused to give up, even though the prize I paid was far too high: the overwhelming hatred, alienation and self-loathing. Finally, my view cleared and logic triumphed (albeit in the midst of a nervous breakdown) and I quit. One by one, I cut every one of my dear foe-ish friends loose until I stood there alone in the desert with the dust blowing around my boots. I had severed all lines. I am released…

It’s not all smelling like Bubblicious and Arabian jasmine though... I am relieved to have made my escape, yet tonight I’m in the process of questioning my mental abilities. How could I have stooped so low in the first place… how could I have been so addicted to something I have always hated with such passion? Why did I listen to myself when I said that I could use it ‘in my own style’, and be kept free from anger & annoyment; and with what fool’s reasoning did I delude myself that I shouldn’t deny myself those slivers of companionship and fun despite the huge costs? I was blind: it was all one big exercise in self-torture and destructive cynicism. And although I could see the beauty in that, it wore me down, so down, and served no purpose any more.

All that was left was a boredom buoy that came with anger, a rash and, finally, panic… The Friend Request that broke the camel’s back was the one from a friend of 20 years back. There his head popped up out of the digital blue in the form of a red button and his written name. He wanted to know how I was doing and showed me his two children. So I did as any sane man would have done: I ran like hell. Christ, if there is one thing I fear then it’s bumping into former friends who to me are now worse than complete strangers. I could feel all these people slowly closing in on me like a band of zombies. I can’t have people that close when all they do is take! (I’m not speaking about all of those people, only the majority.) I should live by my own rule: One should not be there where one does not belong!

Suddenly I saw with great clarity the madness in my system. What the hell have I been doing! To try and fight boredom with anger and pain! This only adds to the Unrest! I was a fool to think otherwise. Sometimes, when my boredom was flying high, I could be seen pottering about the human sewer called facebook till late at night, cringing from every emoticon, ugly thought and corny ‘shared link’… watching birthday pictures of a complete stranger’s Grandmother… watching vomit inducing links for political or philanthropic causes… and petitions! Oh the petitions!  I never sign a petition as a general principle, not even one to safe my own life! Fuck off with your petitions I say! I was cursing humanity and it’s Lilliput mentality yet I refused to get off the island…

This computer has been my ally and worst enemy at the same time. It kept me in a fairy land of make belief and replaced my boredom with oblivion at best. It became so clear all of a sudden: I had to get away from that place, the place where nothing is real. Where everything is fake and digital, virtual, narrow-minded, small, ugly and numbing. What I have to do is something useful… anything! And something real… to write something worthwhile, or clean my house, find a new job, play my guitar, banjo or guitarra portuguesa, to paint, ride my bicycle, walk through the city, talk to people. Or just sit and think. Anything but this! Something real.

So I liberated myself. Cut myself off... What a strange feeling it is to give up most of your friends & relations. But now I can just read a book instead of finding myself watching a video of a piano playing cat at two o’clock in the morning. And all this just because I just didn’t want to back down… back down and admit that I do not belong.

This morning, I walked to the lake close by my house. I sat down on a bench in the sun, the real sun, and the wind, the real wind, and I read in a fantastic book and wished the passing people, real people, to have a great morning. Then I went home, baked bread and the sun shone into my house. It was good here. Nice and lonely. And no music. The leaves of the tree made a nice rustling sound and I heard a wheelie bin being rolled over the pavement in the street. It’s like being on vacation from myself. No more bullshit. Back to reality!

On Leaving Facebook

Part 1. The Note

The first time I committed facebookicide was on the 18^th of March 2010. I left the following note (now slightly abridged) and cut myself loose.

“It’s not you – it’s me”

As some of you might have noticed, I have defriended you all. Not that there was anything wrong with you – far from it! There was only one thing wrong with facebook: my presence.

People with more self-control and less (self)criticism can be perfectly happy with the world of facebook, but for me it’s been a love–hate relationship all the way, and there was more hate than love in that cocktail if I’m honest, and not nearly enough tequila.

I always liked to see the things you wrote, and at times liked posting things myself, but there were more than one element growing increasingly insufferable […]. All this gave me feelings of intense nervousness and disbelonging. I had to get away... away from the world of the thumbs up. And I couldn’t stop checking it out nonetheless... Not wanting to be there, yet not being able to stop myself from visiting the place way too often, see here my split personality to the fullest.

[…] Again: there’s nothing wrong with facebook, nor with you out there using and enjoying it. Only: it’s not for me. I don’t want to be part of a world that prefers the like-button over the self-typed message. Prefab writing, I don’t like. […] I don’t want to stand here and let friendship be devaluated, and I most certainly don’t want writing be devaluated.

I’ll keep the account to safe my photographs and the good history we had. And to check out your faces every once in a while, when I miss you and like to be entertained & shocked. And perhaps I can learn to love this bomb in the future. Anyone wanting to stay in contact can do so by e-mail. Love you,

Martijn

Atonal

Some night last week, I woke up. The usual time, around 3 or 4. It was hot, humid and pitch. I gazed up. Nothing. After a while, I dreamed I had to write something I called ‘atonal’ writings: abstract pieces of prose. I didn’t mean trying to form a verbal maze of hermetic word structures, twisting, & decloaking. Nor quasi-poetical attempts to Dazzle & Amaze… with fancy words and hip rhythms, all but shiny layers of egogloss. No. The thing I had in mind was a celebration of the word. An altar for language. A small Zen garden. A holy lake.

I got out of bed, went downstairs and wrote some ideas down. Unfortunately, the next day, my attempts seemed remarkably similar to complete nonsense. But I’ll go back into the wilderness one day to find that lake. And then we’ll see diamonds at the fast food restaurant. And birds that cry in the night. Or the hotdog stand on the other side of the lake.

Dead Man on the Road

‘This happened somewhere in the end of May, or the beginning of June. It had been a normal work day and I was heading home. I always take the same route straight through the rural land. It was a quarter to six and fair weather as I roared past the town of B. over the tracks in the direction of A. After the railroad you've got a long straight, so I went full on the throttle till I spotted a man up ahead in the distance, gesticulating to me to slow down. Oh shit, he probably thinks that I drive too fast, I thought, but as he kept his position on the road, I slowed down. And then I saw him… the other guy lying there, in the middle of the road.

To be precise, the man was lying in the middle of a junction, although the road he had come out off is a little dead-end street with nothing but a farm at the end. Anyway, I had stopped and the gesticulating man walked up to my window, so I had no choice but to open it. The man was very panicky and asked me if I knew CPR, because he needed help badly. I got out and walked up to the figure on the ground.

And there he lay… an elder man (in his late sixties I think) wearing a faded blue overall like farmers do. He had a shuffle on his bike and a saw, still in his hand. His bicycle lay partly on top of him and the man himself lay motionless on his back with his legs in a twist, his eyes closed and a little pool of blood underneath his head. He looked like a corpse. I immediately saw it: this guy is dead.

A woman arrived by car from the other direction. She stopped too. And in the crossroad stood the pickup truck from the panicky fellow. In the meantime, a man arrived by bike, who proved to be the father of panic man, whom he had called immediately. I know next-to-nothing about CPR, but the father did and he started with it straight away. This seemed utterly pointless to me since the man lying there was very dead.

From the nearby farm, a man walked up. He was the one who had called 911. Panic man told everybody how he had seen the victim cycling on the road and wanting to make a turn. The man had looked over his shoulder and next moment he lay on the road. Main concern of panic man was that nobody thought that it was his fault. He hadn’t hit the cycling old man, but there he was lying in front of his car! He went out of his way to make this absolutely clear to everybody.

He told us that the dead man had moaned a little and moved an arm, but after that, nothing. I heard an ambulance approach in the distance. Since reanimating seemed futile, we just waited for the ambulance to arrive. The woman who had been standing by thought this a good moment to leave, because the police arrived as well, and she clearly didn’t want anything to do with that. I stayed a while longer.

The paramedics arrived and ran up to the victim, but calmed down when they had a clear view of him. ‘That one is dead,’ one of the paramedics said, just as I had thought. They zipped him open, put some sensors on his chest and then they knew enough. Nothing to be done here. A motor cop arrived, looking for witnesses. There was only one: panic man. He got a chance to tell his story again. In the meantime, they went through the victim’s pockets, but he had nothing on him. Nobody knew him, although his outfit, working gear and the fact that he came out of a dead end street made it likely that he was from around here.

I had seen enough of this and got in my car. I tried to find out later: who or why, but I found nothing. It still isn’t clear to me who this man was, but I have seen his dried up blood on the road for many days, and the picture of the dead man lying on his back has stayed for weeks as I drove by. But that is gone now too.

Strange event. A man on his bike, the wife at home, waiting with diner, just doing some work in the garden on his land and on the way back drops down dead. So that’s the way it goes.’

A friend told me this.

From the Notebook Last Bits (part 2)

• I’m observing with unfocussed eyes a caravan of ants on the ground and feel bad and guilty about the smile that lady gave me just now. She smiled so sweetly. Doesn’t she know how evil I am? And thy, ant folk? Dost thou not know either? I may not trot on thee, or on thine offspring, but thy should not expect rain from me either.

• When I close my eyes, I see little balls of gold. No, not gold: a material more beautiful than gold. Shinier, yellower, pearling with a powerful opalescence… and yet it has to be a metal. But it is alive too! That element should also exist in reality: I feel it is an injustice that only I can see it with my fictitious eyes.

• Sometimes, I see in my imagination everything going really fast… mountain ranges shooting up, plants taking root, crumbling down the rocks to gravel and boulders. Rivers, chafing the pebbles into fine sand, washing it down to the bottom of lakes, where it clumps together and forms new minerals with dead beasts encrusted inside. All in a matter of seconds.

• Yes, the plants are in bloom. The carousel is happily spinning round. The girl with her wet hair puts on a little warm vest now that the evening is creeping in.

Palms are waving and colourful boats are bobbing up & down in the Harbour. [A man, who looks uncannily like Eric Cantona, has rolled a cigarette from which gallant tufts of tobacco are sticking out.]

Families are sitting on the beach and laugh… but before you know it people get transported in cattle wagons again.

• I think I haven’t laughed all day today, except just now when I saw a photograph of Barbara Cartland carrying a Pekingese dog under her arm.

• 'M.'

It is a city like a city. With folk traipsing past rotten windows. Poop and plastic on the streets and here and there an angelic girl…

Whereas I was thinking of sinister bars, filled with thugs and bullies, unshaven, barbaric and silent… Of given-up lives, and people who didn’t want to be found… I was thinking of whores and violence… tormented looks, lustreless consciences… And mythical idolatry… worshipped statues dragged into the streets… Wild women following their gods with flaming eyes.

But instead, I see tourists, sun and churches. I spy with my little eye uncle policeman… the old harbour, a kitschy golden statue on a church on a hill and a few beggars more than usual.

• A whole month alone in the countryside… it’s a one-way ticket to the funny farm.