Belgian ramblings

Hey, found that yesterday...I put it up just for archive's sake. I wonder now what frame of mind I was in to write such stuff...I copied it just as it appears on my notepad, no amendments (if I had started amending the text, I would have changed everything, down to the last word - in fact, I wouldn't be able to write anything like that again, totally spur-of-the-moment thing).

Brussels, Luxemburg Plaz, 28 VII 2010

Voices roaring in the distance, where the pub opens up to the world. Attention drowns in the manly peels of laughter, in the happy shrieks of friends meeting for drinks. Memories blending together. Happy shiny people all around. Not much to do but write. Sleep is going to come, soon or late. As if everybody knew how to use Facebook from their very first visit, knew its capacities and casually ignored its defects in the exhilaration. As if everybody knew how to socialise like they were born talkers.

Life has a way of pushing you to your limits and there are no boundaries harsher than your self.

Burning everything down is of no avail.

Danger, on the other hand, is palpable. Pulse-quickening. Makes you feel alive. Life-threatened heartbeats feel different from running or fear or excited heartbeats. Moving doorward. Closer to the people, closer to the gutter. Running out of water in the desert. Which category of heartbeats if that? Chancing upon a snake? Walking in the street at the dead of night? Falling in love? Feeling ignored by the rest of us?

Man in extremity, sure is better than man in the middle, halfway between the gutter and the stars.

Difficult to imagine a better situation than up there parring your fingernails. But better toil and harbour and wither, giving one last shot at it with the best grip one can muster from the pit of one's stomach, scratching one's nose because of the sweat, the heat, the dirt and the blighters. Death all around. Eyeing one. Watching one's every move, begging for one's tiniest mistake. Is it too much to ask for the best or the next best thing?

Moved outward. Downpour. Perhaps a shortcut does exist, but one often takes more time finding it than taking the long way. Nice though. Cobbles wetshining.

Same laws that make an innocent and long-standing bicycle fall. We forgot to remember that we are mad and that folly cannot be cured. Who knows the consequences a piece of long-chewed, discarded chewing-gum might have on a whole, until-now perfectly oiled, system? Those who read the right newspapers. There is no end to that end of Schrödinger's cat's tail. We will be able to spin yarns the size of the Bible. Even though there's nothing as invaluable as a handful of dates and a gourd of water. When there's life and soap, your trip cannot end. And Lichtenstein is on the same Richter's scale as Canada. There's nothing like the magic of basil leaves.

Let's pretend I am writing a song, and that I will whistle a tune of yore, because we have but an inkling of what this sounded like. This song will praise none living nor dead. It will remind you of nothing ever heard before, nor shall you listen to anything unfamiliar. I will not sing any part of the world known to man. My passion is the undiscovered, the unexpected, the world behind the spoken word. Indeed I deal with pain and blood, with agony and death, but as just an off-hand manner as when I deal with love and faith, with mystery and life. Five score hundred furlongs of yarn later and I'll still be at it. Others have paved the way a bit further, now it is my time to become a story-cobbler. Laughter, indecisiveness, reason. Cries, decision-making, madness. Once I saw a hunchback dwarf. A height-challenged person with a physical incapacity to stand up straight, so people say. Oh, and I deal with cruelty as well. Some would like to remove the 'with'. Slipped my mind, accidentally – that goes without crying. With coffee and guns. Coffee because one needs to sober up after a night of drinking and revelling, and guns because whatever they say, they're meant to kill and wage war – but they can be found in the hands of your next door neighbour who likes to keep things, and burglars, at bay. Confusion might be the key to that story, or pure arabica, or a particle of dust in the eye when driving, or sleeping with somebody else's wife, or high-dosed curare. Whatever must go wrong, man is in charge. Ultimately, life and death take their separate toll – this cannot be left unspoken, unlaughed at, uncried, unsung, unanswered, unquestioned, unchallenged. God, the fun that's in store for us! For us all, for now, because in the end monkeys will laugh at us trying to climb a goddamned tree, reaching out with our fingertips for an unknown fruit which, being green still, will infallibly give us the runs.

Bitterballen met mostard and zuur. Quite good, even though most of the content within that deep-fried carapace hasn't yet been accounted for. My taste buds have so far made out meat of some sort. I'll say veal, but chicken cold fit the inexpensive bill. Nothing in there is actually worth reading, as I think every word must sound like a double-barrel pump-action shotgun at point-blank range, and be as surprising. Like a mountain-biker who has never tackled any real mountain until he eventually discovers on the spot that he cannot take it on. Scared shitless because he realises that these were no mountains he rode before, but mere hills. Potentially anything can be said with even the slightest dose of interest or passion. Understanding that passion or sharing that interest and vice versa, ay, there's the rub. Then again, one could go on forever, or until day breaks to do something of more note. Let's not forget that we were hanging in caves and swinging clubs the size of a man's leg for pure safekeeping not so long ago. Nothing is more to your taste than the not-aging-a-whit cliché. The fringes only are worn-out but hey, could you show me a two thousand six hundred year-old shirt that isn't worn-out, let alone dust- and jigsaw-like? And we both know clichés are like shirts: we always end up using the same one all over again. Like when you always seem to recognise a face in the crowd when you're five hundred miles away from home – must be the street-lights. Nothing comes for free in this godforsaken world, not even the one in the buy-one-get-one-free pack, nor in that man-ridden limbo of ours.