How to Become an Agreeable Person

For once, I wrote something in Dutch. I was sitting under slate skies on the shore of Lake IJsselmeer and this came out. Since few of my readers can read Dutch, I will present an (alas insufficient) translation. For those ghostly readers more familiar with that language, they can scroll down.

This is the advice I can give to those who are small and good-natured and want to pursue the best qualities in themself…

Greet no one on the streets. Take off your hat for no one. Resolutely slap the crying child when circumstances dictate to do so. Pick up the phone only if you have a desire for talking. Never answer letters on time. Ignore the dog that casts sad looks from underneath the table. Blow your nose in your hand and wipe it on a child’s comely golden locks. Play with wildest temperament your electric guitar in the darkest nights. And pick a bouquet of flowers for your loved-one from the tombstones of the graveyard.

Be endlessly generous in mocking the foolish, the witless and insensitive. Pardon not a single breach, it isn’t free you know. Wipe your arse with beggars’ letters. Do not refrain from larceny and murder. Stamp on wooden floors, talk too loud with people standing close by. Belch and stink, alike a dog. Decomb your hair, decay your teeth, grow your fingernails yellow and monsterly. And serenade your loved-one with a crooked trombone.

Stare the women at their tits, don't apologize for nature. Never settle for second best. Don’t laugh apologetically for other people’s faults. Mock all  spend-thrifts, public lovers, cripples. No mercy, no ‘understanding’. Leave no sin unavenged, turn no cheeks. Live by the principle ‘he started it’. Decline the tepid glass, wipe from the table the stale old bread. Don’t lift your feet when mother wants to vacuum at that place. Play someone else if need be; fake yourself, be salonfähig, sycophantic… completely false. And kiss your loved-one with garlic in your mouth.

Put a dead bird in your neighbours milk can. Freeze the people with a haunting grin. Spit a priest before his feet. Urinate from your garret window when the moon is full and bright. See the world as a storm of storms. Become high & low reviled, dastardly, heinous. Never discuss Religion, Ethics, Love, Being or Knowing. Don’t explain yourself to people who understand nothing. Calculate the number of the beast and deduct it from your taxes. Poison the city’s water supply. And tell your loved-one you love her, despite it all.

Place visitors in your second-best seat on a Monday. Wear outrageous pantaloons of green seal pup fur on Tuesday. On Wednesdays, wear a big red moustache and a golden beard. On Thursdays, run 500 miles. Visit close-by asteroids on Friday, and wonder about the men who live there. Water your flower on a Saturday. And on Sunday, fool yourself in thinking someone loves you.

These are some of the sacrifices you will have to make to become, in the end, a valued and accepted human being.

Hoe een Aangenaam Mens te Worden

Deze raad geef ik u als u klein en lief bent en het beste in uzelf na wilt streven…

Groet geen mens op straat. Neem uw hoed voor niemand af. Sla zonder te lachen het kind dat huilt. Doe voor niemand een stap opzij. Staar naar ieder om te doden. Neem alleen de telefoon op als u zelf wilt praten. Beantwoord nooit een brief op tijd. Negeer de hond die treurig kijkt van onder tafel. Snuit uw neus in uw hand en klop een meisje op haar gouden lokken. Speel onbeheerst en dronken elektrische gitaar om twee uur ’s nachts. En pluk bloemen voor uw geliefde van de zerken op het kerkhof.

Wees oneindig gul in bespotting van domme mensen. Vergeef geen enkele misstap, ze komen met een prijs. Veeg uw reet af met bedelbrieven. Wijk niet terug voor brandstichting en moord. Stamp op houten vloeren, praat te hard met mensen vlak naast u. Boer en stink, gelijk een hond. Ontkam uw haren, bederf uw tanden, laat uw nagels geel en monsterachtig groeien. En breng uw geliefde een serenade op een valse schuiftrompet.

Staar de vrouwen naar hun tieten. Lach niet verontschuldigend om andermans fouten. Bespot geliefden, koopzieken, kreupelen. Laat geen zonde ongewroken, keer geen wangen. Geen genade, geen ‘begrip’. Leef bij het beginsel ‘hij begon’. Neem geen genoegen met een tweede plaats. Sla het lauwe glas af, veeg het muffe brood van tafel. Til uw voeten niet op als uw moeder daar wilt stofzuigen. Speel een ander, indien nodig; fake jezelf, wees salonfähig, gluiperig, kameleonesque en vals. En kus uw geliefde met een mond vol knoflook.

Stop een vogellijkje in uw buurman’s melkbus. Bevries de mensen met een gruwelijke grijns. Spuug een priester voor zijn voeten. Urineer bij volle maan uit uw zolderraam. Beschouw de wereld als een storm van stormen. Wees wijd & zijd verguisd, geniepig, verschrikkelijk. Bespreek nooit Religie, Ethiek, Liefde, Zijn of Weten. Leg uzelf niet uit aan mensen die niets snappen. Vergiftig de watervoorraad van de stad. Bereken het getal van het beest en trek dat af van uw belasting. En zeg uw geliefde dat u van haar houdt, ondanks alles.

Zet het bezoek op Maandag in uw één-na-beste zetel. Draag belachelijke pantalons van groen zeehondenbond op Dinsdag. Draag op Woensdag een grote rode snor met gouden baard. Ren op Donderdagen vijftig mijlen. Bezoek naburige asteroïden op de Vrijdag en verbaas u over de mensen die er wonen. Bewater uw bloem op Zaterdag. En op Zondag, breng uzelf dan in de waan dat er iemand van u houdt.

Dit zijn enkele van de opofferingen die u zich zal moeten getroosten om op den duur een gewaardeerd en geaccepteerd mens te worden.

Nuclei XI

As I entered my favourite hangout The Norwegian Blue, my eyes fell on my old friend Mannox sitting in the corner under a potted palm. His hair looked undomesticated and he wore a dirty faded black t-shirt with “Big Deal” written on it. He hung over a table like a dead slug.

The poor bastard looked even wearier and beat down than normal. ‘So… !’ I shouted, ‘and how are we feeling today… did life tear you a new one again, boyo skip me ol' matey?’ Cheerfulness is an exquisite type of cruelty.

Mannox looked up and gave me one of his blowtorch stares. ‘I went out yesterday,’ he said, ‘with people… two women.’ ‘Bad company?’ I asked. ‘Worse! They were simply sublime! Wonderful, lovely people… well adjusted, hip, fun-seeking, enjoying every second of their life, laughing all the way ho ho ho! Oh gawd!’

I nodded and looked around for a waitress.

Interludium

Maison des Ailleurs

Note to reader this is the long report of a short trip to a French town and the inner world involved. It’ll be unblogly long (although even only a sketch) and perhaps not very interesting for another person. So feel free to skip this entirely or just watch the photographs, as I wrote it mostly for myself.

Epilogue

What if one day you wake up and realise you have actually started to believe in things. What if that comforting rut of disbelief and dismay one day has disappeared without a warning, and the abyss of an amazing and resplendent truth is suddenly staring you in the face… the shimmering contours of a wondrous temple seen miraging over the desert air of an heretic Promised Land. You can see yourself hopping from star to star over a deep blue playground universe… And the ideas of ‘getting by’, being there, a life secure & predictable, one day all seems futile and preposterously petty.

What if one day you realise, to the full extent of the realisation, that society’s principles do not apply to you at all… that you have no connection to them whatsoever. False, blind, gilded excrements… a gangrenous carcass of worn out, animalistic ideas. Unpoetic garbage! To hell with them: the future is mine! What if these thoughts one day materialize into fragrant fruits on branches so close you can almost touch them…

I will tell you what happens… you go out of your mind, that’s what happens! And the follow-up is foreseeable: you give up your connections, burn your address book and leave without a trace in the night for a land far away to see the grave of a gifted, scandalous poet.

I

At oh-nine hundred hours, a male, Caucasian, of indeterminate age and medium build, big mop of reddish blond curly hair, horn-rimmed glasses, wearing a pair of blue jeans, black sneakers and black t-shirt, possibly D&D, seen driving south in a 1998 cobalt blue Peugeot 106 past Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, across the French border and finally over the N43 into Charleville in the Ardennes. Considered unarmed and dangerous.

The I’s are sick… the I’s within, and the I’s around are sick too. Bruised, green, pockmarked. Drowning in a world of preposterous poopycock prophets. Running in circles, chasing their own tails. Enough of this! No more compromise, and enough with sacrifice. Deeds are due! And so are we, the I’s of I: we be due… And we be gone. Away from the thems and out of their I’s. Call it an escape to Alcatraz if you will. Curtains… open! Firework, kettledrums… light!

 

II

The midsized and sleepy town of Charleville in the French Ardennes is famed for a tri-annual puppet festival and for being the birthplace of short-lived decadent poet Arthur Rimbaud. The river Meuse slices through the city in several friendly meanders; the houses are covered in slate, the people are tough, the industry dinosauric. Our subject was seen circumnavigating the city and checking into campsite ‘Le Mont Olympe’, next to the river, in the heart of town. Place Nr 121 was appointed to him. It was here that he erected his firm canvas tent he had lovingly given many names in the past: Waldheim, Château Rêve and, lastly, the Traveling Den. An air mattress was inflated with a car battery-operated air pump, after which he threw a comfortable pillow inside, zipped up and left for the city on foot.

Poet death, your art is done… We should go and see the place. “Why not!” we had said. So we did. To prove nothing. Prove nothingness. Go see the town of the prodigy, the wild-haired gypsy libertine… the Scummiest Man ever to Shine! Restless soul, dead before his untimely death…  And not to Paris, again, to feel the aftermath of Parisian Orgies and the Commune… stumbling in on sulfuric, purple velvet plasma, spiritualists, on Montgolfier egos and anarchists, the putrid clouds of perfume and pretense… No, we go see the country village of the cradle, to take in the earth, the dirt, see the tomb of the Muse of the Meuse, the corruptor of raptors. Not to the place where he went up and down in a cloud of the Green Fairy and opiates, but to the rural place where he was taught how to drink, fight, fuck and steal. The place where his visions became living ghosts. The place he loathed and got him to the unknown and beyond!

 

III

The sun shone fiercely. Our man walked transparently around the town with silent footsteps and a nervous smile on his face. People drifted over the Place Ducale, the city’s far famed navel. Some enjoying a glass of wine and a smoke on a café terrace, talking to friends & relations. Others were just sitting there, coughing bits of sunlight slime from the deepest pits of their lungs. Centrally, the fountain of au non potable spouted. The inevitable carrousel spun merrily round, playing German songs for two or three passengers. Sometimes for no one. His eyes saw all, seated on a cast iron bench. He looked and thought while munching on a piece of baguette.

Round ‘n’ round ‘n’ round they go… Howl, horses of the Brandenburger Tor! Howl, horses of Guernica! It makes me vomit… Bugs! Bowing to food, fashion and gadgets, stinking up the place like an infestation of rats. Breeding new generations, frog leaping over each other, in perpetual motion, new fuel for the trenches… And in the process extinguishing the sun for plastic candle, Walhalla for a nuthouse, dollhouse world… The terror of the unimaginative, petty, half-sized lives and assimilated tribe. But who’s she? A nymph, an apparition…

 

IV

Today, the old water mill is a classified monument housing the Musée Arthur Rimbaud. Spread over three floors, visitors can get a feel for the work and the life, mostly in facsimile , in paintings, sketches and a few personal belongings. Efforts are made to stress the poet’s everlasting importance by displaying artworks related to him or his work of internationally famous artists like Fernand Léger and Jim Dine. Across the street of the Moulin, one finds The Maison des Ailleurs, the former house of the poet’s family. One can wander through the empty house, where sounds, lights and a few small photographs are trying to tell you something about the man and his travels. Although in his work literal references to his background are scarce, the back garden and his own room are some of the few places where you can see something laid down by his poems. For the rest it’s an empty house.

The smell of the House Somewhere Else... Ghosts and a creaking floor… and no one else in this museum but me. These are delightful sinister drama’s, the ultimate destination. This is exiting… I love this place. Small museums with little inventory are the best: always living up to their expectations, always surprising and leaving all the enjoyment to the visitor’s own imagination. And this one is the best: a completely empty museum with bare walls and empty space. The place is filled with fabrications of the mind only... There’s the courtyard, seen through an orange plastic window cover, personating this season in hell. There is soft whispering in the rooms. I see a girlish lean boy with blue eyes scribbling Latin verses in a school notebook. He’s stamping his feet, baring his teeth. The echoes, void and smudgy ceilings are anticipating the colossal blowout… the blast, the bewildering breakaway from this house and country, and all artistic traditions in language, love and life. I want to nod to him as time will paint everything white and rivers keep on flowing. He looks up from his paper at me. He wrinkles his nose and his eyes smile…

 

 

 

 

V

When the day grew late, a simple diner was quickly and unceremoniously devoured and washed down with plenty of spirits. As it would get dark, he would get up, collect some secret objects in a linen bag and start walking about. The footbridge over the river connected the campsite directly to the town’s centre. He would walk directionless and freely, just to see what can be seen. To be in a French town at night, smell the night air, watch the shades and reflections, the shopping windows, the graffiti, couples holding hands, three girls out on the town… moonlit lives. Back on the square, he’d observe the night folk, the carrousel covered up in red & white plastic and the illuminations on the town hall and eighteenth century buildings… He’d look at the stars and conjured visions... before slowly meandering back to the tent.

There’s the Place du Gare again, with that ghastly statue of the old devil. We was here before, we was, we was... Ay, t’was a fine and a pleasant day… Singing! Pussy meow, come on now, I’ve got sweet white milk oh wow… Bats and praises, hell and raises! Enough of that, be quiet now. Act normal. Make a left here, and follow the trail of the optometrists. Past the Le Rimbaud Café, past the Le Shanghai Restaurant, the fountain and straight to the square to sit us down and think. See us now, oh Evil One… Oh my love… Over the hills & down in the valley. We is just pretending of course. We amuse no one but us. We is so alone. A died down footstep in an empty, dank basement.  Crushed gravel and dead flies. Nature throws itself on us and will tear us apart, of that there is no doubt. She and her helpers will be the better of us. Dead wind will blow over mirror speckled country roads… moss on island tombs.

VI

It had been another chill night, but as soon as the sun rose over Mont Olympe hill, temperatures would quickly climb to t-shirt levels. The first hour or so, he had been sitting in his car, drinking instant coffee and reading a book, glancing anxious looks at the surrounding natural landscape. He would describe it in a letter:
“It is good to be here. There are some things that make it hard though… by Jove there are. My mind, my mood for starters. I mostly blame the light for this. It is transitioning into Autumn… You can see it just by looking at the sun, the way it shyly shines and feebly sparkles… the piercing colour of the light and the pallid blue of the sky. Furthermore by the subdued dewdrops on the morbid lawns and the leaves swinging on the trees. They’re hanging on, and fighting against their old enemies Fall & Rot. I am feeling quite morbid myself, I’m afraid, in line with nature and the atmosphere of this place and this trip...”
However, as soon as the coffee was finished and a bit of stale old bread eaten, he would get up and go for a long walk along the Meuse. The river lay soothing, ancient and placid, fuming in the cold morning light. The white sun flattened all colours and disarmed the land. With time space dismantled, the land turned into a peepshow. He walked for miles.

Going nowhere. Just downstream to see the other end of you, my friend. If I follow you long enough, we will cross two borders and arrive at my brother’s house. From the Mont Olympe where we shake our hair till the netherest of the Netherlands. Together we give new meaning to the words. You speak true, my friend underneath this sapphire down… Glowing, flowing, emerald wilderness, wonderful and curling, biscuity cavorting, almondy flowerbeds, mademoiselle… But the light, my friend, the light is an army of parabolic shields, burning us to a fine dust and ashes. And you can offer me no protection underneath. We cannot breath the same ether. Dare I say this fierce light even seems to please you. Do you fear living in a glass box? Why do you now hold your tongue… and stream away from me? What happened, my speechless friend? Have I done wrong? Where are you going? This is the end of ends…

VII

Place Winston Churchill is a small rectangular square of classical geometrical design in the heart of town. In the centre of it, a proud erection of a monument, pompously glorifies the fallen heroes of the Great War. Benches and lawns are positioned circularly around. On the lawns, the dogs do their business and on the benches the schoolboys & girls do theirs. They belong to the adjacent Lycée Saint Rémi. Amongst the children, we find our man. He’s doing nobody’s business. He is making charcoal drawing of the twisted soldiers on the monument, studying the names of the dead sons over & over and watching the hordes of youths while drinking tequila-flavoured beer.

C sharp. Heaven thanks for sun and warmth, France and beer. To sit here in this park in precise and controllable restlessness. All is quiet. All is safe. A minor. The way those girls are smoking… only French girls smoke like that, with heron grace and pouted ruggedness. C. The way they manipulate hold their cigarettes and blow smoke heaven high, incense for the pillar angel of death. A minor. What painful beauty… how vulnerably joyful. Like castles made of icing sugar. B minor. Just drink up and feel the warmth. F. Don’t look now. Don’t think. Don’t blink like crazy. D minor. Time passes and passes, the sunlight materializes on the people. E flat. A bridge of broken strings. IPhones from Van Diemen’s Land. A.