story unfolded.
There's a lady,
walking the streets around my office.
A little odd, she carries a Mickey Mouse backpack and she sometimes talks to herself.
In the midst of all the crazy professionalism of the EU quarter, she waltzes to her own tune.
I pass her by, in the little square right next to the large intersection
The city is drowning in a new kind of sunlight and everybody is soaking it up.
She is walking slowly on a small patch of green bordering the cobbled street.
Too busy throwing handfuls of breadcrumbs around to notice that there are no birds anywhere to be seen.
The square is empty, but for a few tourists taking snapshots of King Leopold on his horse.
None of this matters to the lady, busying herself feeding the fictitious birds.
What is she doing? For what, for whom?
Perhaps it does not matter.
If she provides the bread, surely they must come?
And if they don't, she knows she did her part.
Now, this could be a story of a bird-lady, about casting pearls before swines,
or any other story you might find yourself needing right now.
But it's probably not about birds and breadcrumbs.
Syntax, semantics and seeing clearly.
Lately,I am experiencing something like a revelation
I have caught myself thinking I am reliving something I have written,
rather than writing about what I've lived or hope to live.
Tss, syntax, you might say...
But to me this is semantics.
This means something, everything.
Am I just growing up?
Maybe eventually, we all start to feel more present, more content, no matter what?
More probable, this is me starting to peel my way to my own core.
Shedding those dry, sharp layers that no longer do me any good.
Appreciating the remaining ones so much more.
The most significant lesson of them all.
And I am finding that underneath it all,
that copper coil of desire no longer conducts my anger,
but only fuels my dreams.
Wild and uninhibited.
The poetic generation.
Oh, the woes of the interconnected world,
at once, excruciatingly fleeting and eternally, irrevocably permanent.
We are documenting our lives to an extent hitherto unseen.
Older generations are puzzled, at best.
'Why do you do it?' they ask, their faces barely hiding a smug smile.
Thinking back at the good old days when nobody second-guessed an emotion,
when people worked without searching for their dreams,
and everybody's privacy was impeccably private.
So, why do we do it?
Is it because we can? The technology is there, why not use it?
Can we somehow blame it on capitalism? (Some do, I am sure)
Does our generation simply lack the cultural ambitions of those before us?
Or is it because we can't really feel ourselves living?
Emily Dickinson had to feel her life with both her hands, just to make sure it was there.
Is this not what we are trying to do?
Sending out thoughts, messages, pictures; and waiting for them to resonate.
Waiting to feel that our lives are still there, somehow. Somewhere.
Does this make us the poetic generation?
- Probably.
