Digital Bath

Voter, c'est pisser contre le vent

2010-09-29T15:38:00.004+02:00

We have created a dimension in which we have convinced ourselves that it is people, not subjects, that should be elected, that should be voted upon, that should be in power. By failing to have seen the initial impact of money on politics, coinciding with unavoidable corruption, as well as the "bribability" of politicians that is now proven to be an inherent human weakness, we are sustaining a system that maintains the power of the opulent as well as the misery of the poor. We must grant power to ideas and no more to people who have contrary ideas to the public, which, thanks to better transparency, will increase public involvement and dismiss the apathy fed by the discontent with politics' ivory tower of peoples all around the world.

Poèmes de Paris

2010-09-03T15:33:00.002+02:00

I carefully caress you
- in a way I hadn’t deemed possible –
And you shudder like shellshock.
You erupt what seems ten thousand times.
On a diet of mafia cigarettes
Tom Waits sings his songs,
And we both know they’re about us;
This is our life in rooms.

Without confines we find ourselves unnaturally bound.
Your beauty is exasperating and becomes inexplicably untouchable.
Outside our vacuum my body is dysfunctional;
Within our vacuum of peace,
Sometimes violent, when you command,
Sometimes purely loving,
My body cries of lands undiscovered and history yet to come.
Outside our confines, within the greatest liberty thinkable,
We hunker for our terrain vague,
And every single daydream is a poem written about our seclusion.

The existence of our vacuum dissolves
And my soul flows along unwillingly.
My greatest hero is your ego,
The greatest villain is your time.

It all ends where you leave.

~~~

Traffic in Paris

I overlook an eternity of desire, ahead.

Our bed is broken, my back destroyed, our hearts finally mended.
Decisively we head for our next non-destination,
As we keep falling through the floors and ceilings until everything becomes one again,
The room and its floor, its ceiling and its curtains,
Its wasted years waiting for love,
It all becomes your gazing brown eyes, as big as the room itself,
As big as Paris,
Always asking me what I’m thinking of until they reside,
They reside in love’s vacuum where they find peace.

More days to come to hallucinate in lucidity.
Only a couple more days to come to wallow in your eyes
Yet an eternity of desire to write about them.

~~~

Leaving Paris

Where is my heart?

I’m here to exhume a body,
The body of the capital of my desire.
I can feel it press on my skin, like your cigarettes,
Paris,
Or the butts that are now left behind.
You are an elegy,
Paris,
With your sweet scent of sex
From hotel rooms that outlive
All of your creations.

Where is my heart?

I have lost it in the streets near Moulin Rouge.
This city is dead to me now.
Only my tears accompany me now
Through Montmartre,
Up the stairs to the Sacre Coeur.

Naamloos

2010-05-05T21:48:00.001+02:00

Versteend door de jaren,
Een gedicht zonder geraamte,
Kanker om het te verzwaren,
Een lichaam zonder schaamte,
Vervallen in gewoonten,
Bedeesd tot op het bot,
Heerser van een koninkrijk,
Een koninkrijk zonder lot,
Een oeverloze rivier,
Waarop ik me bevaar,
Met een kompas zonder vizier,
Richtingloos in het gevaar;
Een herinnering wordt vereerd,
Een verlangen altijd begeerd,
Een leven zonder haar.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

2010-03-21T10:39:00.001+01:00

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Lee Frost

All You Who Sleep Tonight

2010-01-27T22:01:00.000+01:00

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right,
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

Vikram Seth

2010-01-26T22:13:00.001+01:00

Samen
zijn onze woorden

onze stemmen

onze gedachten

en
Samen
is onze liefde
zoals geenéén,

maar ík, ik ben zó
Alleen.

2010-01-21T14:55:00.000+01:00

Because I'm finally able to access some works that I was unable to access before, and because I want to share them, I've decided to make a compilation of older work which can vary from 2 years old to half a year old. I will post them in no particular order.

Cats & Dogs

2010-01-21T14:52:00.001+01:00

I stay inside

Although the sun shines. She seduces me – the full glory of light –
And traps me into the corner. As I close the curtains they dance
For me, and in my soporific state (who taught me that word?
Oh I remember, it’s the mysterious French girl whose words
whirl inside me erratically, without treading on the traces of reality;
I bet she is asleep right now, dreaming of another world)
they unveil their secrets for me.

Epiphany, I can see you, I will trust in you no more.
I think about blinding myself but that means I would be
Harnessed by your despair, that you awoke in me, that will not rest.

I’ve never seen buildings as tall as these. The devils throw rocks
At me from behind their wall of mist, as high as my enslavement,
But they never hit me anymore. The angels scream at me from
Behind the same clouds, sometimes ringing my ears deaf,
But the distance is too great to carry a message with our earthly voices.
All of them, way up there, on that first building to your right
Have consumed their own fate like cattle. But I can see them still.

The curtains have stopped dancing by long, serenely
They flatten their corruptive body, awaiting my approval.
And it’s this very moment – in control of everything around –
When the raindrops start a riot with the vibrant cold
And heavy darkness that I feel content and pleased.
I’m not to be seduced by the lucency of your kind any longer.
Admittedly black in soul, I now open the garden doors

And march within the night.

Stop, Slow Down.

2010-01-21T14:51:00.000+01:00

You step into the white fluorescent light
That my sight had so intensely captured,
And harvest spring fruits before my eyes;
Each single fruit piece is your gracious body.
But the white stream moves away and follows its path after
The courageous jet-fighter, with thousand feet per second
High in the air,
As do my eyes.
The white clouds seem to be struggling
With each other to go into whatever direction
As fast as possible, taking all sorts of forms.
Every small piece is another secret of beauty to me.
Every second one awakes anew, and builds
Its own peaceful kingdom in the skies.

I saw the plane descend behind the defoliating treetops,
And you disappeared the same moment
into the intangible haziness of the smoke.

2010-01-21T14:50:00.000+01:00

The natural beauty of a stream of water
Made me finally park my car,
And exhale my youth.

In nowhere and everywhere I found myself;
One physical, the other spiritual,
And together lost in happiness.

I took it all with me to the chosen spotless site
You had so clearly and vividly recognized
From your collection of dreams.

It were those dreams that we had built on,
Those dreams that we cared for,
In those dreams we believed.

There, in my head a piano sounded
And I felt our dream
Awake.

There, on the banks of that river,
You gave birth
To our dream,

And
We walked with it and fed it
Along the shores of time.

Chez Diable

2010-01-21T14:49:00.000+01:00

Solemnly the silence hovers through my entangled hair
Which had never felt so original before.
But it was not only my hair that felt out of place.
My clothes – compared to theirs, which are reminiscent to me of that time I played ghost
With my little sister; but the drawer with the sheets was too high for us
So we played with the old curtains –
Had never looked more modern than in this environment.
Nonetheless, no-one noticed my presence in the anonymity of this place of Hope
That looked so cold and dead to me -
Or rather found me worthy enough to notice.
Maybe they were all connected to Him;
I mean, for God’s sake, what do I know?
I am only here to bring the red wine.

I turn around, close the heavy, mahogany-adorned monastery door
And walk to the always attractively cosy-looking café ‘Chez Diable’ –
And I noticed for the very first time
That the door is decorated with the same mahogany woodwork as the monastery door –
To deliver the money.
I suddenly remember that the oldest customer once told me
That the café must be as old as the monastery,
Because it has always been there
Just around the corner.

Still

2010-01-21T14:47:00.000+01:00

Still, flat lines,
Drawing but eternally being drawn;
Our lives are so restless.
Romance with no name eats its heart out
And prays for satisfaction.
The sky opens up and drops new things
Onto our curiosity and boredom,
And we never give in
And we are never sorry.

I know you don’t want me to write right now,
But you’re nearly asleep – a moment of peace –
And I’ve never been so penetrated with emotions.
You kick me softly, once,
Twice and I drop the piece of paper,
That spreads its wings
As if nothing had gone wrong.

You can’t see me because you turned your back on me
But I’m awake already,
Wrapped in morning’s light
That even illuminates your corner.
You turn and the bed makes funny noises
And you yawn
And you sigh,
And the light fades into the other room.

Cracow by Night

2010-01-21T14:36:00.003+01:00

We drink our beers in the slumbering of the city,
In the morning of the night
When the cigarette smoke that is the morning mist
Stains my vision as well as my lungs.
There's no music;
Only an alarm clock ringing in the form of a popular song
that cuts through all that is unconscious and of interest to me.
We dare not speak yet cause we fear our voices
haven't recovered from our last attempt.

I feel alone and abandoned like a little child.
I count the days your arms have stopped touching me
(I haven't the courage to count the other way around)
and know I will only need one hand,
Although I honestly feel like I need every single finger of you.

The music abruptly stops and I can think again.

I feel our desires meet, some place elsewhere,
that we can only travel to together,
but it is the desire of seeing you again
that cannot meet yours.

Another empty glass makes two more hands
and the table - poisoned with alcohol - tremble,
Raising so many urges,
Raising indolence to its feet.

I wished there was a mirror
to reverse or adjust my angle on this moment,
to reverse something that feels so irreversible.
I wish another person's joy was more understandable to me.

Morning ends
Today, as we carry ourselves through the streets
that whisper in a language I do not speak.
I'm once more struck by loneliness
and when I finally find my temporary bed,
It's the breathing of the unknown people
that keeps my solitude awake.

Letters to the Beloved, #3

2010-01-15T15:29:00.001+01:00

Het is alsof mijn gedachten niet meer menselijk zijn, alsof ze boven al het mogelijk menselijke zweven, net zoals de mens er eindeloos over heeft gedaan voordat het kon vliegen, moet ook dit een compleet nieuwe uitvinding zijn, iets wat de mensheid nog nooit eerder ontdekt had, iets waarop ik, zodra ik me even zonder bovenmenselijke kwaliteiten voel, patent kan aanvragen ware het niet dat ik zelf geen idee zou hebben waar ik dan eigenlijk de ontdekking van claim; wanneer ik ren, ga ik minstens twee keer zo hard, wanneer ik moe word, geef ik daar helemaal niets om; als ik val, lach ik in plaats van beschaamd te zijn en huil ik alleen om de kleinzieligheid van al het leed en verdriet in het leven, dat toch, met de kracht van zoveel levenden, door de liefde, niet per sé de zwevende en onbegrijpelijke soort, hoewel ik het me wel zo voorstel, al dat leed wordt bestreden door die liefde, en zoals ik het nu voel, zoals ik mijn bloed krachtig voel pompen en mijn hart hoor vechten met elke slag, mijn vuisten niet gebald maar mijn handen in elkaar gevouwen als twee geliefden in elkaar gevouwen in bed, zo voel ik het, zo voel ik dat we sterker zijn dan al het verdriet, dan alle pijn, zelfs sterker dan de kracht van het al het afsterven.
Nee, nee!, ik heb het niet over individuele liefde, het kan niet zo zijn dat, ik accepteer het gewoon niet dat men denkt dat mijn liefde alleen op mijzelf slaat, alleen mijzelf gelukkig kan maken terwijl ik zie dat het zoveel anderen om mij heen gelukkig maakt, moed geeft, meesleurt in positieve gedachten die uitmonden in een onuitputtelijke hoop op verbetering, op iets mooiers, op iets... liefdevollers. Ik weet dat het niet alleen op mij slaat, daar hoeft niemand me van te overtuigen, niemand zal me van het tegendeel kunnen overtuigen, ik kan niet de enige zijn die deze liefde zo voelt en ik kan dus ook niet de enige zijn die liefde op deze manier wilt delen.
Ik ren, ik zweef, ik val, maar ik val niet echt, ik struikel over de grappen van het leven, ik zie waarom ze grappig zijn en niet pijnlijk; ik lach niet om de pijn van anderen maar ik verzacht het door naar ze te lachen, door ze te leren begrijpen, door hen mij te laten begrijpen, door hen lief te hebben zoals ik niemand anders en tegelijkertijd iedereen liefheb. Het is waar dat ik één persoon bovenal, boven iedereen zal liefhebben, maar is dat dan erg? Wat wordt verwacht van mij? De bron van alle liefde heb ik natuurlijk meer lief dan de stroompjes door het landschap die het voortbrengt, net zoals de basis van een liefhebbende familie, het hart ervan, twee innige geliefden, en hun zoon en dochter, net zoals het hart van een familie de leden zijn, niet hun huis, hun auto, en alle liefdeloze kapitalistische troep die tegenwoordig wordt geassocieerd met het hebben van een familie; zo zal mijn liefde voor haar voelen, als het hebben van een familie; dat moet toch één van de mooiste gevoelens ter wereld zijn. Mijn liefde voor anderen, daarnaast, is niet vergelijkbaar met materialistische liefde, zoals zoveel families hebben; ze zouden nog liever hun buurman laten sterven dan hun televisie afstaan. Nee, mijn liefde is voor iedereen, niet individualistisch, het heeft enkel ergens een bron, een bron die ik waarborg en eer, vereer, terecht verafgood.

Erasmus

2010-01-15T01:39:00.004+01:00

We are murderers of creativity
and backstabbers of motivation,
pickpockets of happiness
carrying our wine and hoarse voices in the streets,
shining like stars, shamelessly
in our nightly feverish insolation.
Crossing white lines, uncertainty encircling our oh so temporary entity,
and you tell me “I can’t dance to techno music”,
crossing darkness, harassing yourself and discovering liberty,
and you tell me “I’m so depressed, I don’t know what to do”,
falling from your bed into the emotional gutter,
and you tell me “let’s just be friends”,
crossing my personal Interzone
as I crucify wooden Jesuses
and spread my semen on your walls.
We are worshippers of black culture
crossing cultural bridges
oversleeping life.
We are the laziest lifesavers on earth.

love, again

2009-12-29T17:56:00.002+01:00

Liefde voor meisjes : het vinden van een ander persoon tot wie je je op een irrationele manier voelt aangetrokken, meestal vanwege de onzekerheid over de interesse van de andere persoon in jou en relatief waardeloze kwaliteiten zoals “het maken lachen” of coolheid/status van de persoon, om vervolgens gewend te raken aan de ander tijdens de relatie en deze gewenning te verwarren met een diepzinnige en onverklaarbare band met die persoon.

Love for girls: finding another person to whom you feel irrationally attracted, most often because of the insecurity about the interest of the other person in you and relatively worthless qualities such as “making you laugh” or coolness/status of that person, to consequently get accustomed to the other person during the relationship and mistaking this habituation with a profound and inexplicable bond with that other person.

???????

Liefde voor jongens: het hebben van zoveel mogelijk seks met meisjes tot wie je je aangetrokken voelt, en als dit buiten je bereik is door wat voor omstandigheden dan ook, het behouden van een enkel meisje dankzij wie je op een regelmatige basis seks kan hebben, waardoor je uiteindelijk in een relatie belandt en je al je mannelijke vrijheid verliest.

Love for guys: having as much sex as possible with girls that you feel attracted to, and if this is unreachable for whatever reasons, retaining a single girls thanks to whom you will get sex on a regular basis, because of which you consequently end up in a relationship and lose all of your masculine liberty.

???????

Liefde zoals het zou moeten zijn, liefde zoals ik het zou willen: twee innig verliefde personen, die elkaar aanbidden op hun knieen dankzij hun gepassioneerde verlangen de ander alles te willen geven wat een mens maar te bieden heeft, zonder ook maar de kleinste egoistische gedachte.

Love as it should be, love as I want it to be: two persons deeply in love, worshipping each other on their knees thanks to their passionate desire of willing to give the other person everything that a human being has to offer, without even the smallest mention of egoistic thoughts.

...

m'endormir

2009-12-15T14:37:00.001+01:00

Het enige moment waarop ik me waarlijk veilig kan voelen, is als ik m’n eigen paleis beklim, onder de dekens kruip die ik zelf elke nacht verwarm, waarvan ik zeker weet dat ze mij veiligheid bieden omdat er nog nooit een andere ziel onder geslapen heeft, omdat ik alleen hier mezelf kan zijn, alleen kan zijn; omdat ik niemand anders kan vertrouwen zoals ik mezelf kan vertrouwen, omdat ik in niemand zo ver kan verdwijnen als in mezelf, zodat ik me veilig voel, veilig, eindelijk veilig, niemand anders die nog durft mijn gedachten binnen te dringen, zo schijnbaar eindeloos alleen met alleen m’n eigen armen om me heen, dwalend door m’n eigen dromen.

2009-12-11T13:37:00.003+01:00

I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU.

YOU're the one messing up the system, supporting it like a cheerleader during a football match.
I don't give a shit about you, you're not doing anything to improve it.
What the fuck are you talking about, marriage problems, don't fucking bother me with that.
I don't give a shit about you and your rose.
What are you being insecure about? The way you look? Let's see how you'll look after having died from famine.
What the fuck is going on in this sick society?
I don't give a shit about you, who do you think you are, the queen of the proms?
Oh you are, now tell me why I would ever give a shit.
Go fuck yourself and your ego.
I don't fucking care about your facebook.
I hope you choke on your cigarettes.
Let's smash some mirrors on the wall tonight.

Vriendschap en Liefde

2009-12-06T13:13:00.002+01:00

Ik begrijp iets wat ik onbegrijpelijk genoeg eerder niet begreep.
Ik begrijp waarom je zo voorzichtig bent met liefde tussen jou en mij.
Ik begrijp dat je mijn vriendschap zo erg waardeert dat je de kans het te vernietigen misschien liever niet voor lief neemt.
Maar ik kan je een ding beloven:
Niets gaat ons vernietigen, zeker liefde niet, omdat jij en ik de liefde zelf zijn, en zonder elkaar niet meer zijn dan een gesplitst hart.

2009-12-06T13:00:00.003+01:00

I sing
of battlegrounds;
Vultures dragging my heart
through the muddy grounds
and deserted prayers,
abandoned fields,
leaving it there
to rot at sunset,
throwing it around
shooting it back and forth
as if it were a bullet,

while it's a heart.

There is one vulture
that takes a long flight,
a deep dive,
plunging its beak far into the flesh
and ripping out its insides,
tearing off its pale skin
as a final symbolic gesture,
like how they often shoot
once more at a dead man,
leaving it unprotected
for the rats and armored tanks,

...

until the sun rises
and revives the corpse
of a hardened soldier.

since feeling is first... (VII)

2009-12-04T20:01:00.002+01:00

e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

The dilemma of being in company

2009-11-23T14:29:00.003+01:00

How come

one can reflect about solitude
with another person,

ou sont toutes considérations complètement inutiles?

Write about me

2009-11-23T14:27:00.000+01:00

Stars, shoot me,
For I already feel as dead as fallen rain.

Snowball, cast me,
For I want to know what it feels like to be thrown away.

Waterfall, bring me down,
For I want to drown in your endless flow.

Words, speak me,
For my desire is to be the essence of this poem.

Alles en Niets / Tout et Rien

2009-11-23T13:46:00.003+01:00

Nothing

Everything,

Both in my desirous hands.

---

Everything equals too much. When there's nothing left to desire, you will enter a permanent state of decadence, which will eventually kill you either physically or mentally or both. Therefore, when everything equals too much, everything equals sadness and misfortune.

---

My love for you feels like everything I will ever need.

---

My life is continuously divided by the following discrepancy, keeping mostly in mind the positive connotation given to the word by people:

Losing everything
=
Having nothing to lose

---

Is this true? When I lose you, if I lose you, will I be as neutral as if I had never met you? The obvious answer is that you will definitely FEEL worse, and that begs an altogether different and more important question. Can you separate feeling something and being something? Could it be that you feel worse but that in fact you're BEING as if nothing had ever happened? If that is true, then the ancient rational vs. emotional issue is of much more importance than I had ever imagined.

---

It is only in nothing that we search for all.

America

2009-11-13T13:36:00.002+01:00

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Allen Ginsberg

Collection of notes

2009-11-12T01:07:00.006+01:00

It's a shame blogspot doesn't allow any spacing before a sentence starts. Now these notes look even more fucked up than they already did.

People that say chess is a complicated game forget what makes games complicated: the human factor.

There's no betrayal in chess!

---

The more I try to tame my passion, the more it becomes untameable.

---

If only my thoughts weren't constantly racing like this

... then I could have the perfect relationship.

---

Don't make any compromises with me in love;
it's like selling your soul to the devil
for only half of what it's worth.

---

Once more I wonder
what keeps us all going

what keeps us alive,

While I feel so much like dying.

---

Music is not and cannot be about musical sensation;
Instead, it's about human passion and emotion!

---

I keep thinking that I'm alive
But when I observe others around me
I notice that I'm barely breathing.

---

What makes me believe that this exclusiveness of love that I constantly and thoroughly feel is even a bit similar or at least somewhat present in anyone, any person of the other sex? Why can't I become aware that it's virtually the other way around?

---

Xenofobie is een geestesziekte.

---

Xenofobie is de meest serieuze vorm van discriminatie van onze tijd.

---

Xenofobie is de enige geestesziekte die onbehandeld blijft en de enige volledig geaccepteerde vorm van discriminatie.

---

The transition of idealism into cynicism is one of the most dangerous developments in our youngest intellectual generation.

2009-11-07T04:34:00.003+01:00

The world is comedy to those who think, but a tragedy to those who feel. - Horace Walpole (renversé pour l'instant)

Loveless

2009-11-05T17:52:00.005+01:00

The value and position in society of prostitution has been occupying me as well as the apparently so fragile relationship between sex and love. Loveless sex, but also sexless love, are interesting concepts that are beyond my grasp. I will deal with them separately. This short poem is about the contradictory, or to me seemingly contradictory, experience of being with a prostitute.

--

You take off your bonnet

And your hair spreads the smell of love

While your hand stains my bare chest.

You make no effort to speak,

Your approach is most fair;

No sweet whisper in my ear

Just the soft click-clack on the stairs.

In observation of your sophisticated

Straightforwardness – I’ve met no-one more honest –

I’m disillusioned nonetheless.

I’m so baffled by your skills

That I cannot rhyme any longer.

You are the question what love is yourself

But considering it you wouldn’t dare;

Money is your only distress.

Remaining now is only the smell of your hair,

The stain of your worn out dress.

The Mars Volta - Since We've Been Wrong

2009-10-31T03:01:00.002+01:00

Since We've Been Wrong

Do you still remember how you wore that dress
it slit my sight beneath the eyelids
Do you remember what you said to me
What course has given you the right to stray
And in your living tomb I'm stuck but safe
The clocks are ticking fast with every breath

Since we've been wrong
I've been part awake
Since we've been wrong
You will never ever know me
What took you so long
I'm not sure all the way
But my heart it asks just one more time
Are you still a mess?

One day a rain will come to wash away
The earth that held us was no island
I have become ingrown inside this skin
I'll find a way out through those eyelids

And all the days become a cast away
I seem to think I don't belong here

Since we've been wrong
I've been part awake
Since we've been wrong
You will never ever know me
What took you so long
I'm not sure all the way
But my heart it asks just one more time
Are you still a mess?

I don’t belong here
I shouldn't stay
What falls inside me grows empty
The wall between us will never break
Just seals it shut
It grows empty

Since we've been wrong
I've been part awake
Since we've been wrong
You will never ever know me
What took you so long
I'm not sure all the way
Since we've been wrong
I've been part awake
Since we've been wrong
You will never ever know me
What took you so long
I'm not sure all the way
But my heart it asks just one more time
Are you still a mess?

La seule nuit (work in progress)

2009-10-29T12:37:00.003+01:00

I picked you up somewhere along the line.
I told you I like your earrings.

Love, loveless; stars shooting
in your eyes like fake jewellery.
Your body is oh so real on touch.

Somewhere I think I can hear
your voice calling for love
but I can only see you crawling,
a shadow of a dog.

(I can't believe I'm so excited
over something which will lose
its value in about 10 minutes;
it must be the capitalist dream
keeping me awake)

Undressed; getting lost in the rhythm,
In this movement,
Until you set me free -

Eventually.

tiny excerpt from (een) Zwarte Zomer (working title)

2009-10-25T16:37:00.006+01:00

Onmacht doet Carlo besluiten uit de kapitalistische wereld te vertrekken, uit Nederland te vertrekken, naar Afrika te gaan, naar een land waar de maatschappelijke problemen niet zo kinderachtig zijn, niet gaan over wie meer geld heeft en het wel of niet willen afstaan van kleinzielige vrijheden, terwijl vrijheid toch niet in gradaties is te meten, althans niet meer in Westerse maatschappijen; vrijheid is een gevoel, vrijheid moet je niet kleineren met problemen die de naam niet waard zijn, met problemen die toch eigenlijk niemand serieus mag nemen. Carlo heeft de vrijheid naar een Afrikaans land te gaan wanneer en op wat voor manier hem dat belieft, een Afrikaan heeft niet dezelfde vrijheid; dat is vrijheid, niet of een immigrant in je straat komt wonen en jouw straatbeeld verpest, achterlijke mongool, vergeef me mijn terminologie; als dat de naam vrijheid draagt dan wordt het tijd ons woordenboek te herzien.

Whether or not to give in to capitalism should be the most important issue for the intellectuals to be growing up in our era. - (fictitious character) Carlo (Marx)

Het wel of niet toegeven aan kapitalisme zou de belangrijkste kwestie moeten zijn voor opgroeiende intellectuelen van onze tijd. - (fictitious character) Carlo (Marx)

2009-10-23T18:37:00.001+02:00

"We are here to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

- W.H. Auden.

Notes to an Absent Lover, #4

2009-10-23T12:39:00.000+02:00

Zonder jou
Beleef ik niet wat ik leef.

Barcelone / Picasso

2009-10-20T15:28:00.002+02:00

Après avoir visité Barcelone, et le musée de Picasso, quelques petites notes.

Please, oh please, read Fyodor Dostoyevsky, read Crime & Punishment, for it's a marvelous book; but I need you to read it, most of all and regardless of its beauty, to confirm that Pablo Picasso has painted something which is so similar to an image described in a scene in C&P, a fantastic painting. Je l'ai cherché sur internet mais je l'ai pas trouvé. Ca me souvient d'une belle citation de Picasso:

"Je ne cherche pas, je trouve."

Demande-moi si tu veux le voir! J'ai acheté une carte postale de ce tableau. Phénoménal.

Quelque chose d'autre. Comment c'est possible pour Picasso de pouvoir déménager en France facilement comme ça, sans problèmes de barrière de la langue? Il me semble qu'aujourd'hui ils existent plus de barrières qu'avant, quand les artistes, les poètes, ils voyagaient aux autres pays sans problèmes du tout. Whereas nowadays it's not obligatory anymore to learn any language other than English, which is also exactly the mentality of the people, because of which they lose all sense of beauty in other languages and even in English.

I hope I will never stop learning languages.

Happiness Revisited (egoism and the happiness of others)

2009-10-20T15:24:00.002+02:00

Growing up is a form of degradation. Innocence is the purest concept I know, in all my childish experience, and it’s also the first thing you lose when ageing, until you reach a stage of pure consciousness, total awareness of everything around; some psychologist of yore called this building a superego, das überich (or rather this is how I prefer using his concept). Therefore, when we grow up, we face the following duality: we either desperately attempt to hold on to our innocence, ignorant and in denial of the perception our senses give us, and more importantly, nostalgic of what we used to be. Although this might work for some, I believe the reflective human being, when opting for this, will necessarily feel discontent, on the one hand trapping himself in his childhood and on the other hand not wanting to give up the pleasures of being an adult, combined with a lack of taking responsibility for one’s actions. This is one of the hallmarks of western civilization, interestingly enough to be found throughout all education classes, from alcoholic university students to hustling youngsters in the slums. The other option is accepting the loss of innocence. Within this domain there are again multiple possibilities. The road to happiness is roughly divided by the decision to care or not to care about this loss of innocence. Those who don’t care have naturally, as they don’t care, chosen to live a life in which respect for others has reached a low; their non-innocence allows them to. They have a weak superego. The ultimate point is that they care about no-one other than themselves. How they have come to be like this is an altogether different albeit interesting question, which is of no particular relevance at the moment. The other option of adulthood, intrinsically more difficult to achieve than the one just described, is the only form which allows others to be happy not only regardless of but even because of another’s happiness. The strength of one’s superego plays a major role in this. It enables one to keep one’s pleasures of adulthood, whatever these may be, within certain boundaries, allowing those around him space to express themselves to a similar degree. It seeks a form of innocence incomparable to childish innocence but nonetheless valuable, I could argue even more valuable. Not only does one not harm others purposely but with the reflective capabilities one gains with adulthood one can better judge what will please another than with the childish form of innocence. It must be evident that it is this last category we must explore in order to be able to consider its usefulness as a theoretical approach. A debate on the realistic or idealistic mindset and which is the better (read: idealism is better than realism), is also very much appropriate, as the existence of the kind of innocence as described for the last category is very much dependent on an idealistic mindset, as is all improvement in life.

Notes to an Absent Lover, #3

2009-10-20T14:54:00.002+02:00

Je ne t'ai oublié
qu'esperant de pouvoir te retrouver

quelque part.

Rêver en français (reconstruction)

2009-10-20T14:47:00.007+02:00

Je te vois, au-dessus des nuages, flotter sur la vie, criant de bonheur – ton corps deux fois plus grand que normale, quelque chose grandissant sans limite dans toi, et comme tu grandis, ta joie grandit aussi rapidement – tes cheveux se composent de roses fleurissant, et tu me vois comme j’ai déjà tout ce que je souhaiterais.

Je te promets que je reviendrai presque immédiatement et je pars, vous avez besoin de nourriture. Tu étends tes deux mains, deux autres mains dans ton intérieur qui s’etendent – il me blesse que tu penses qu’il existe une possibilité de te laisser complètement seule, même si à partir de maintenant tu ne seras jamais seule, et après avoir dit cela, tu me dis qu’en fait je suis un homme.

Sans être fâché et sans faire autres promesses je t’abandonne. Tu m’as dit assez souvent que tu me connais et si tu me connais, tu sais que je reviens. Combien de fois je suis déjà revenu ?

Je rentre, dans mes bras plein de choses pour ta survie et mon cœur plein de vous. Tu m’embrasses sur ma gorge, une fois pour toi et la deuxième pour elle, et je crie comme un bébé.

Feeling Good

2009-09-30T13:24:00.003+02:00

Birds flying high,

You know how I feel;

Sun in the sky,

You know how I feel;

Stars when you shine,

You know how I feel;

It's a new dawn,
It's a new day,
It's a new life,

For me;

And I'm feeling good

I'm feeling good.

Het Bewustzijn

2009-09-27T18:27:00.000+02:00

Ik denk nu – hoe vaak ben ik al niet een zin zo begonnen? – dat de belangrijkste categorisatie van mensen te maken heeft met het wel of niet bewust leven, of het wel of niet bewust willen leven. Ik heb het nodig om, na voor een onbepaalde tijd door het leven te hebben gerend, terug te keren naar het bewustzijn van het moment, van een uur, van een dag en uiteindelijk van m’n leven. Sommigen zouden dit ‘reflecteren’ noemen en hoewel het er wel iets van wegheeft, noem ik het zelf niet zo. Reflecteren klinkt namelijk heel klinisch alsof het alleen gaat om de overpeinzing zelf en om het resultaat daarvan, terwijl het juist het emotionele proces van de overpeinzing, van het overdenken, van het bewustworden van het leven of een onderdeel daarvan is dat verreweg het belangrijkste is. Het is is onbelangrijk of er resultaat wordt geboekt in het intellectuele proces van het overdenken, in ieder geval onbelangrijk voor mijn categorisatie, omdat het er vooral omgaat of iemand het bewustwordingproces beleeft of er aan voorbijvliegt.
Ik heb ook wel eens gedacht dat anderen misschien een veel hogere limiet hebben dan ik voordat ze zich moeten ontladen en het dientengevolge lijkt alsof ze niet bewust leven, alsof ze de emoties die de eerste groep wel voelt niet voelen, en dat lijkt ook een logische verklaring; dat zou ook betekenen dat je je limiet misschien kan verlengen tot op een bepaald gebied waar jij je er comfortabel mee voelt. En dat zou weer betekenen dat men ervoor kan kiezen wel of niet bewust te leven, en ook dat ik er bewust voor heb gekozen zo emotioneel mogelijk te leven.

Equilibrium of Youth

2009-09-27T18:23:00.000+02:00

It’s exactly days like these that make me reconsider my assumptions about finding a balance in life. It is, at the moment, as tempting as it can get to not want to find a balance and to live simply where the wind takes me. Had you asked me yesterday, I would have replied there was nothing else but wanting to have balance or the road towards balance on my mind; but today, I feel I can hold it out a couple of days longer without, at least until my heart warns me it might stop beating unless I put it back on the shelf, where I’m sure it can rest peacefully, fully supplied with blood but drained from all life.

Francais

2009-09-27T17:46:00.000+02:00

Ik heb een nieuwe reden gevonden waarom het voor mij zo urgent is een nieuwe taal, of misschien nieuwe talen, te leren. Het is niet mijn inherente interesse in alles om mij heen maar eerder een vorm van overleving die, zo denk ik nu, de belangrijkste reden voor mij is om een taal te leren. Ik merk namelijk vooral dat wanneer ik een andere taal spreek ik me beter op m’n gemak voel, en het wel of niet op m’n gemak voelen is altijd al een enorm thema geweest in mijn leven; een thema dat ik nooit genoeg uitgediept heb, waarschijnlijk door de angst om het aan te raken.

Wanneer ik een andere taal spreek dan deze, dan de taal waarmee mijn hersens gevormd zouden zijn, heb ik een nieuwe benadering van een situatie die in deze taal altijd al heeft vastgelegen. Ik begrijp de situatie hetzelfde maar ik ben niet gebonden aan een bepaalde reactie die alle creativiteit van me ontneemt; het is kennelijk ervaring in situaties in deze taal dat me vastgepind houdt, dat me dwingt om op iets te reageren zoals ik er altijd al op heb gereageerd. Het zou ook inconsistent zijn als ik dat niet deed. Maar een nieuwe taal, een nieuwe reactie; zolang het overgrote deel van de conversaties, net als taal, de oppervlakkige kant van vorm aanneemt, maakt dat het voor mij mogelijk om, zodra er een verandering van taal plaatsvindt, ook een verandering van oppervlakkige houding aan te nemen. Het is als een nieuwe laag die over me heen zit die opnieuw de situatie kan analyseren om opnieuw een keuze te maken uit wat de beste, meest interessante, meest uitdagende, etc. manier is om te antwoorden of om niet te antwoorden. Zolang het gaat om dingen die mij niet maken als persoon of die ik niet als zodanig weet te waarderen dat ik het belangrijk vind dat standpunt in elke taal uit te stralen, zal grilligheid mijn grootste persoonlijke kenmerk zijn in een taalbarrièrevrije leefomgeving, die effectief toch nooit zal bestaan. Belangrijk is dat ik het niet als negatief ervaar: het ontneemt onzekerheid omdat het mogelijkheden opent voor sociale omgang. Het maakt van mij een aangenamer persoon in gezelschap. Het verbetert mijn zelfbeeld en versterkt mijn zelfvertrouwen. Zodra mijn zelfbeeld verbetert, ben ik socialer en dus voor veel mensen een beter persoon. Het gaat uiteindelijk om wat andere mensen van je vinden want andere mensen maken je. Door middel van taal creeer ik diverse lagen van oppervlakkig reactievermogen.

Notes to an Absent Lover, #2

2009-09-26T11:10:00.002+02:00

If only you were more similar to me, had two eyes, preferably green, two feet for me to play with, long dark hair in order for me to catch you when you run away from me eventually, or short red hair so that you can escape my touch after you've given me my heroin; a pounding heart to keep me awake during the night.

If only you were more human than ideas usually are.

Notes to an Absent Lover, #1

2009-09-17T23:33:00.002+02:00

Your absence fills everything.

à côté de la Garonne

2009-09-16T14:39:00.005+02:00

Un point d’interrogation sur les têtes d’étudiants,

Embrouillés par l’atmosphere, dans ton estomac,

La ville en rose, mais par ici plutôt la ville urineuse;

You’re treacherous. As close as we are to the stream,

On the red grass, glass, from emptied wine bottles

Recycled, we lack all consciousness of your rapidness.

Heartbeats, and we smoke Greek cabdriver cigarettes, rolled

With paper that must’ve been used during the Trojan War

To fortify the city walls, so strong, so lasting;

I hear myself speak French but no-one else does,

Even though I think you’re listening.

Dans quelques secondes, moi, il faudra que je te raconte

L’histoire de ma vie, et donc, au lieu de cela,

Je rêve de m’immerger complètement

Dans ton corps.

De herinnering aan jouw liefde doorboort mijn schrijven,

Voor even,

En voor heel even voor altijd.

I am not I

2009-08-15T22:55:00.004+02:00

- Juan Ramon Jiminez

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

Prose for the beat generation

2009-07-22T23:24:00.004+02:00

"But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes Awww!" - Jack Kerouac

Those are the ones, the only ones.

Poetry for the beat generation

2009-07-20T00:23:00.003+02:00

There is no rhythm at all

In the platoons of this verse

Which sings about despair

In erroneous grammar.

No signs of that perilous

Indoctrination along

Highways crammed with

Attempts to transport

Oneself to places

Better than our own,

Justified but dumb

Not any less.

I will follow their trail

Soon in the afternoon

Of this aftermath

Of screaming confusion.

Garden parties look

Like my mind in winter

With flying hanging

Baskets, set on fire.

Now that I’ve finally

Seen you I cannot say

Whether I’m sure, unsure

Or simply confused

About being here,

Leaving from here

Or being there.

My face writes messages

That I cannot sustain.

Ironically I should

Stop speaking because,

Like drums that

Disappear from hearing

Distance,

My words are falling

Apart upon their

Writing.

Pas ici

2009-07-09T23:37:00.001+02:00

Gewassen door de regen

drijf ik over de wegen,

bezeten, lachend,

totdat ik uiteindelijk aanspoel

en alles ben vergeten.

Brandend van verdriet

en het waterpeil ontstegen,

jouw prille liefdeslied

verborgen in m’n hart,

zo zorgvuldig verzwegen.

Met jaloerse woorden

die de duisternis verstoren

spreek ik, ben ik

door jouw stille eerbaarheid

verloren,

Vanavond,

gloeiend en doorweekt,

als minnaar van jouw ziel,

sterf ik slachtoffer van de regen.

Find You

2009-06-30T01:09:00.006+02:00

What's Wrong with the World, part II

2009-06-30T00:44:00.004+02:00

I've just finished writing my paper on American cultural failure. I always feel incredibly inspired in that domain when listening to the right hip hop songs, for they, like no other songs in different genres, are able to translate rightful anger and injustice into powerful music. It is their storytelling that makes my mind as focused as their sharp beats. I love these people. They fight for a better world.

Homeland and hip hop. To think about the origins of hip hop in this culture and also about homeland security is to see that there are at the very least two worlds in America. One of the well-to-do and another of the struggling. For if ever there was the absence of homeland security it is seen in the gritty roots of hip hop. For the music arises from a generation that feels with some justice that they have been betrayed by those who came before them, that they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hellholes of prison. They grew up hungry, hated and unloved. And this is the psychic fuel that generates the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry. One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth that climb above the pit of poverty. In the broader society the opposite is true, for here more than any place on earth wealth is so widespread and so bountiful, that what passes for the middle class in America could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world. They're very opulent and relative wealth makes them insecure, and homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as say military intelligence, or the U.S Department of Justice. They're just words; they have very little relationship to reality. And do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon? Do you think ducktape and Kleenex and color codes will make you safer? From Deathrow, this is Mumia Abu Jamal.

70 (65) years

2009-06-28T00:27:00.000+02:00

A tale of prospective growth

The moment I wake up, I will have forgotten what it was that was troubling me the day before. Needless to say, something that is only troubling for one day (or less) can hardly be called a distinct trouble; it’s rather like noticing that you’ve just finished the peanut butter and feeling vexed about not being able to eat your next sandwich with peanut butter, while somewhere during that process another part of you has already realized cheese tastes much better with this kind of bread anyway. I don’t know what to call troubles like these and I don’t know what to remember of yesterdays, almost as much as I fail to take any pills that are forced upon me by physical prescription. Let’s face it: it has become illegal to die nowadays. Perhaps one thinks that the moment all your troubles have gone away, along with your short and long term memory, there is eternal bliss ahead of you. Instead, I tell you, not remembering what troubles you is much worse than remembering it for, in fact, rather surprisingly, you will always remember that you do not remember anything. Life is a memory falling apart in front of you, with your claws – for that is what they have become, and for some have always been – clinging on to a vast emptiness, and your feet barely walking upon it. For so long, I haven’t dared take another step.

Today is one of the better days. I think I can recall things more clearly than yesterday or the day before that but at the same time I can’t decide whether I’m awake or sleeping. I also think the drugs have made me more numb than usual. I speak French to myself, English to my paper and Dutch to my dead dog. I have accomplished what I was meant to accomplish in this life. In books, when they have reached the part after the epilogue, there is nothing but empty white spaces on an even whiter page. I’m quite sure about my thoughts on the after-life, still, whatever I may have thought about it before; but I don’t believe that I could ever have been so stupid as to believe in something being written on those white pages of books. It is obvious that they are empty. In a way, my life’s the same now. The page is still there but the story has already ended. It seems like the pen could start writing – wait, I mean like the computer could start typing new words any moment, sort of like the half-way break in theater. But there are way too many breaks on this page. Something feels odd. And today, today is one of the better days, one of the clearer ones. When I look up to the ceiling, I imagine an outside sky bluer than the one on the day I met you. Now I remember you and forget you again before I realize that I either remembered or forgot you. Today is one of the better days, one of the clearer ones, and I rise myself from my bed to get the feather to use the last drops of ink that are about to dry up without having written another word.

My heart has started beating just for the occasion, albeit just a little bit, but I don’t desire more. My feet have started walking and the feather has started writing, scribbling words that are incomprehensive and non-lingual, although I’m sure others exist that will be able to read it – not many, perhaps, but some might exist. I’m sure of it. My eyes see one of the largest dunes they can remember – images are easier to remember than thoughts, aren’t they? They are even larger than the one on which we laid ourselves that day, one of the days I met you for the first time. On other days, I would so much like to have met you again for the first time, on that dune, larger than this one, but today I walk past it. I can smell the salt, occasionally smeared through some of the earlier and later and middle pages in the book. I walk until it is only water I feel, and, exhausted, I realize that I need to write only a bit longer. It is much darker than before and I relive the happiness of the clear morning. The day will come to an end soon. The water is even saltier on my hand than it is in the book. My skin takes in the salt and my hands wither before my eyes, as do my feet and knees, and almost my waist now. My fingers stop writing as my head submerges in the sea water and I float towards the emptiness of my memories.

2009-06-15T22:09:00.000+02:00

"Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened."

- Clea Lawrence Durrell

I Subside

2009-06-12T02:04:00.000+02:00

Am always

drifting,

wandering,

till I

finally

drift off.

Castles, heroes, and so many made-up pictures of you;

Dragons, winged poets, a river of gold and your liquid body;

You talk to me for the first time that I can recall

And I hear it all in exclusively enticing rhyme and rhetoric.

Actual dilemmas appear on the surface of what is, like

I’m not sure whether the first poet alive wrote about

love or about the agony of a lost love;

It’s kind of like a “chicken and the egg” situation.

Voices of teachers,

mothers,

and superegos

pounding on my consciousness.

My mass-produced, easy-to-build and will-easily-fall-apart

desk has never felt more seductively soft than

Now. I raise my head to resist its treacherous temptation

but notice that the air of dreams around me is too heavy.

Mistakenly I think I’m counting the words on my page,

- how many more till completion? -

but I’m only counting the seconds, always slipping away

from me.

Yes, unstoppable

2009-05-29T17:50:00.000+02:00

Unstoppable, this is the mood, but yeah my back still hurts. Why can’t the air be cleaner when it’s so warm, and why, when it’s cooler, do my lungs still feel polluted?

Hold yer horses, work is precious but only a means to an end. Relax every once in a while and take the time to regain consciousness. Do you listen to me, at all?

The sun presses on my plagued skin with nowhere to go. I feel as tormented as a bull in an arena, if those bulls still feel at all, or in fact especially if they don’t.

Steamy dripping sweaty palms feel how their own pulse rapes this interpretation of the realist dimension, leaving behind those dreams of honor.

Calm, fitter, healthier. Like a pig, in a cage – on antibiotics.

I’m hungry, and unstoppable.

Letters to the Beloved, #2

2009-05-27T02:13:00.000+02:00

Deze brief is geschreven met een vraag in gedachten die mij gesteld is door iemand die me zeer dierbaar is maar waarop ik helaas toen niet de mogelijkheid tot antwoorden voor heb kunnen vinden. Die vraag was: "denk je dat de toekomst fijn is?"

In de wetenschap zijn er veel mensen die beweren of die er de mening op nahouden dat alles wat wij kunnen voorspellen of alle waarheid die wij kunnen bereiken enkel en alleen voorspeld of bereikt kan worden met een 'probability rate', een zekere waarschijnlijkheidsfactor. Zonder al teveel in te gaan op mijn ideeen over wetenschap wil ik dit idee gebruiken als inleiding om te kunnen vertellen wat ik van de toekomst denk. Mijn toekomst staat namelijk gelijk aan mijn dromen. Mijn dromen zijn er in vele maten en soorten, sommige onrealistisch en andere misschien wat minder, maar ze hebben allemaal een ding gemeen: ik zal ze alleen kunnen bereiken door ze zo goed mogelijk na te streven. Ze zullen niet uit de hemel komen vallen op een dag om door mij omgetoverd te worden in een dagdroom (een realiteitsdroom; dat klinkt als een contradictio in terminis maar het is in feite alles behalve dat; ik heb soms momenten dat ik zo vol van geluk leef, dat mijn dromen realiteit worden, ook al staan ze nog altijd gelijk aan de toekomst) om, net als wat de mens alles en iedereen wat en die op deze wereld leeft of niet leeft heeft aangedaan en zelfs met zijn eigen soortgenoot probeert te doen, door mij aan een ketting te worden gelegd en als een servus mij op mijn wenken bedient wanneer ik daar de behoefte toe heb. Nee, ik zal er naar moeten streven deze dromen zo dicht mogelijk in mijn bereik te laten komen. Maar zelfs als ik mijn uiterste best doe, als ik mij van mijn volle macht bedien, is er nog steeds slechts een bepaalde kans dat mijn dromen waarheid worden. De vraag rest natuurlijk nog of ik denk dat mijn dromen "fijn" zijn. Daarop antwoord ik alleen dat ik graag zou willen dat je mijn dromen kon zien.

De toekomst is daarom een bepaalde waarschijnlijkheidsfactor van mijn dromen en van jouw dromen. Ik kan alleen maar hopen dat sommigen (of het liefst velen) mijn dromen delen en ook bereid zijn voor ze te vechten. Fortunately, I know you do.

Bakery Girl

2009-05-16T01:17:00.000+02:00

Slippery day, boogie music, food for thought piled up in circles

Around me but the streets await me for my physical limitation.

You’re my breakfast, the best there is, and I dodge mental hurdles

Knowing that the smile of the whitest bread will bring compensation.

Between the platforms of parking spots and infrastructured violence,

Foul-mouthed drunkards and morning rapists, lies your estate

Of inside cheery charity and outside commercial diagrams.

Silently –or speechless– you hand me the shining jewelry, pre-made.

You start asking and I find you eye-dancing with my hesitation.

Non-conversationally, I wrap myself up in so many a heavy thing,

Always ending up with grain quality and workfloor dedication

While back home I find myself underneath the surface of everything.

The House Where We All Live

2009-05-15T15:42:00.000+02:00

Vandaag regent het, dus ik luister muziek.

Written by Finn Andrews.

There's an old child's swing set on the lawn
And an ivied wall lured by the years
A neckerchiefed spaniel patrols the swamp
And drinks from the garden of our tears

There are many rooms and many floors
A billion up and a billion down
I'm not sure God knows we're here
Most nights it keeps to itself

There's a widow's wing and an unloved wing
On the unwanted floor towards the rear
I've tried to memorise their names
But no sooner one dies than another appears

There were bible verses all down the halls
But they soon got replaced with explicit cartoons
There’s lipstick marks on all our collars
And the sign on the gate reads 'Come Back Soon'

We all do our best to keep it clean
But some guy's minds are like a sieve
And sometimes it's a little hard to sleep at night
In the house where we all live

Now when I walk the grounds at dawn
I can hear the sounds of far off bells
I lay my feet out in the reeds
And I dream of being somewhere else

So boy, next time you are in town
Just ring the bell and I'll come let you in
I don't think you're going to need directions -
Just ask for the house where we all live

I wish you could see this moment.

Letters to the Beloved, #1

2009-05-11T22:56:00.000+02:00

My heartbeat is irregular. It leaps, falls, gets up and leaps again at the thought of me writing you. My hands tremble and create an avalanche of fallen teapots in an historical imagery. My ears are so focused I swear I could hear you breathe even though I have no idea where you are. Every thought of anything else other than you is murdered brutally. You’re looking at me as if I’m insane. You resemble the lady of the only film that I’ve ever seen. Or was she in a photograph? No, I have always said photos mean nothing to me. But the dearest memory I carry of you is of my eyes succumbingly staring into yours as a photographer gazing into his lens. And I realize that I’m happy I don’t like taking pictures as you can never rely on them as you can rely on your own eyes. A girl today explained to me the notion of realism in art and how it can never be achieved, how the painter’s attempt to visualize what he sees is always imperfect and how the photographer is only able to capture just the smallest part of reality. Well, in fact a photo’s goal should never be to approach the truth. Or so do I believe. If that was the aim of the inventor of the camera we wouldn’t just see happy pictures, those images that reflect our prosperity and the grace of having posterity; instead, the camera would show us a well-balanced compilation of moments spent together, the sunny but also the windy and rainy days, including the face of adversity – the mouth of the tiger, perhaps even the stomach of its child. But it’s not that which still makes me hesitate when looking at photographs, not knowing whether to truly enjoy visual pleasure or cast it away as if it were a paper tiger. It’s just that this image of you, this photo the little artist in my head took of you in your moment of shining brightness – no, not true! It was a very well-balanced day! – surpasses everything I have ever seen before. I can’t even seem to remember the moment. I woke up this morning with my roommate’s music on. A second later I realized it was my music, but played through his sound-system. He was playing an album I lent him, one of the greatest albums ever. It’s called ‘Disintegration’ and one of the first songs (I think it’s the second one; have you ever realized the magic of the number 2? It’s so magical that if it hadn’t existed, I probably wouldn’t even be thinking of you right now) is called ‘Pictures of You’. It’s the one thing that makes me question my indifference towards pictures. I’m thinking now that perhaps I can’t remember the moment because there was no moment in the picture, it was just you.

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

(A Line-Storm Song – Robert Frost)

I apologize for my scrambled mind.

À plus, bonne nuit, mon coeur.

What's Wrong with the World, part I

2009-05-10T12:28:00.000+02:00

Homogeneity of Humanity (and its Tyranny)

‘Mental illnesses’ are new. By new I don’t mean new as in the commercialized meaning of the word – even though I haven’t quite decided whether or not the business of treating mental illnesses is commercialized – but I mean rather that it has slowly seeped into Western thinking. The existence of a mental illness presupposes one important thing: there is also something like a normal mental condition, a condition that should, because of its regularity, reflect the condition of the average human being. It is of significance to see that is unimportant whether something like that – a normal mental condition, I mean – exists or not; it’s a lot more important that we believe it exists. We totally embrace the medical world in the hope it can cure our illness, normalize our mental state.

By normalizing, not to say homogenizing our humanity – I could in fact give many different criticisms on this, such as the disappearance of creativity or the insecurity imposed on women by beauty ideals, but they won’t really help me prove my point – by normalizing fellow humans, we believe we can make them happier. We believe happiness lies in normality, in homogenization, and, although I’m not a competitive kind of person and this should be plainly viewed as an argument for those who are, averageness! Happiness equals being normal. I’ve never taken any psychology courses, but this seems to be the basic law from which the whole field has emerged.

Perhaps we have already accepted this by long, and perhaps my vision that humanity is disgusted by everything that is out of the ordinary – except when you can make money with it, that is – is based on my own prejudices and therefore nothing better than any other unjust conclusions that are derived from prejudices. But I can’t suppress the idea that not so many people consider themselves to be normal, even though they might not stray from ‘the point of normality’ as much as those who are diagnosed with a mental disease. In fact, almost everyone wants to be special, failing to perceive one of the most striking characteristics of being normal.

And perhaps, just perhaps, that is the problem with having good norms and values – one might say ‘normal’ norms and values, or is that too tautological? – that even I myself preach, for it seems that without those values, call them Christian, European or Western, our society is unable to function properly. Those who are more normal than others, who are also those who are with larger numbers, maintain control over what is good and bad, what is just and not. They have the ability to single out everyone that tries to denormalize their system through either official coercive means or the much more powerful social communal means. Which puts being out of the ordinary in a very awkward position, in the first place because society declines them the ability to strive towards their kind of happiness (through legal means), and in the second place because they will become jealous of normality and therefore necessarily unhappy.

Is there a balance to be found? A balance between the normalizing pressure of society and the oddness, I prefer creativity, which seems inherent to many populating that society? It is too bad that these people do not at all become any happier with the relentless attempts of civilization to homogenize them, otherwise there would be no problem. But those who are abnormal, even though they can be made normal, can hardly ever be made happy by making them normal. In fact, they are the ones keeping society in its equilibrium by being abnormal, in which it allows for more people to live than just the ‘normal’ ones, almost sacrificing themselves for the others to be happily normal. For if there was no abnormal to compare themselves to, there would be no normality and thus no happiness.

Piano, unknown

2009-04-24T00:48:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I get lost in the woods

When I wander too carelessly.

I often meet girls there Some

Are afraid of me, just because

I have a penis Others

Seem to feel safer for the same reason.

I cannot blame them There

Is a certain ambiguity to being male

I haven’t figured out myself How

Can I expect them to understand then?

Others again run around Sheep

That behave like wolves, fierce but

Entirely defenseless Taking

On everything at the same time.

They are all nameless. names,

What do they mean anyway;

They are like questions Wandering

Around carelessly under a canopy of trees.

Unsent

2009-04-18T13:49:00.000+02:00

Letters, mounted upon each other, thousands,

But only hundreds tell of sweet adoration.

In my dreams I send them and in my nightmares

You yield them to my wrong postal address;

In life I’m never drunk enough to look upon them at all.

I don’t order these letters, but luckily they automatically

Order themselves chronologically. So if I die,

When you read them, don’t read the first ones,

Don’t read the ones on the top, written in blood,

For they are full of unjustified horrific thoughts.

Read the ones at the bottom full of indulging treasury

That marks the true romantic spirit of words unread.

I cherish the thought that you have written me back,

Somehow, mindless of the rumbling of our reality.

I hope I have never before written this, for it is untrue

And very shameful and distorts every ideal,

But I want to burn everything

Before I forget it all,

And then, sometimes, speak to you with a voice anew.

Your life's a movie, my life's a poem

2009-04-13T21:58:00.001+02:00

Haphazardly your eyes dilate to a diameter of almost the size of your big toe
- which shines through the nakedness of your April dress,
wearing thin Winter's depression of my manhood -
as the screen flashes red and green and yellow and purple
and love love love is written all over the fixation of another movie.
Rapture screens your face and negates reality sitting next to you.
Stardom is as fantastic as it is real in anyone's mind.

No drastic measures are necessary, or are even welcome
in a house as blissful as a romantic comedy's positive plot alterations.
Therefore I keep quiet and enjoy everything there is to your dreams
while reluctance and a bubble of nerves forward the imagery
until your smile climaxes along with my stomach and the ending.

runaway lost

2009-04-08T14:28:00.000+02:00

It’s all green here as the night sets in ----

Making a mockery of any other possible emphasis ---

While you stain my finger

Burning down to your toes.

Calme-toi.

Common sense and cultivation

Shake hands

Like we do: unfriendly, a bit too tight

But simultaneously stimulating and ultimately satisfying.

Your meaning is as ambiguous to me

As science and religion to us all --

You comfort and you distress,

Give desire and satisfaction at the same time (but so loveless);

You are loneliness and you are company,

You hide, are found and will someday

(hopefully)

Be ever lost.

2009-03-20T00:03:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking quite some time on my first post. It should be something good, of course, but nothing too direct or personal. It should be introductory instead of diving right into the middle of something. It should be catchy but not fake.

I found something introductory when I finished reading 'Impulsen', a collection of poems by Dutch writer Hendrik de Vries. He entitled it 'II' in a section called 'Grensgebieden', but I will simply call it

Zomer

Vrieskou, die moordzuchtige woei.
Eindlijk warmte, als vreugde-beving.
Wilde tuin, in voorjaarsbloei.
Eigen diepvertrouwde omgeving.
Groots festijn van 't nieuw ontstaande.
Maar daarboven:
Wat hij nauwlijks dorst geloven:
Zulk een weerkeer, zo'n herleving
Van wie hij verloren waande.