We are like sculptors, constantly
The shape of him was yours
how funny, I thought, that I had not noticed this before.
Oblivious to the absurdity of it all as it unraveled
Real time surrealism, the kind you cannot pay to see.
When he spoke, it reminded me of you. Of you talking about him.
It made perfect sense.
In the way a really complicated, beautiful pattern makes sense
because you know you will never fully understand it.
And the lines between you grew blurrier still.
For a second, in the dark, I was not sure if you were there.
I was not sure whether I knew you anymore.
I knew I was making a mistake.
Linguistically paramount
You and me; Paris.
As unlikely as it is predictably irrational.
Surrounded by famous buildings, greedy tourists, yellow letters, barely helpful signs,
yet nobody is here but us.
Stuck in traffic, stuck in time, stuck right here.
We keep scratching each other so that the wounds will not heal.
Para que. In the subjunctive.
If only English would adhere to the rules.
If only we would.
Friends from outer space, afraid to let go
I am an accomplice in this
psychological game of denial
It is so far gone we have forgotten what it is we are deliberately hiding,
Perhaps we are really hiding from our real selves.
We talk of old times as though we were not editing the truth
We think we are right.
We force-feed each other excitement and we postpone pain.
A bottle of wine, a glass of beer
And the epitome of romance.
What would you do?
Thats what we did.
This is the space in which we exist.
Our feet don't even touch the ground.
Questions are never answered,
Actions don't need justifications
And the real world is far, far away.
The barely bearable banalities of being.
I lost my words today. Quite literally.
An entire notebook full of them, left behind amidst cups of coffee and busy tourists.
Exposed to the mercilessness of a burning sun.
I obsessed for a little while,
about the potential humiliation arising from people reading my scattered thoughts
Until I realized they must appear incoherent to the point of complete unintelligibility.
Or perhaps, whoever succeeds in deciphering them will be my true soul-mate.
So, in a Hansel&Gretel fashion, I simply threw some breadcrumbs out,
not hoping to find my way home, but to be found.
However silly and banal the thought, it produced in me a brief relief,
and soothed the worst Angst caused by my temporary aphasia.
In retrospect, I am ashamed of this cheap and ordinary consolation.
Next I started thinking about all those lost words.
The thoughts not yet finished and how now they never will be.
And I contemplated how vain it is, this writing my thoughts down,
as though they were more valuable than others, as if they matter more, in some pseudo-divine way.
This incessant obsession with retainment.
Everything must be kept; must be strapped to this bundle of life that is me.
Why?
"The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant."
Was Kundera right?
Does it all come down to this abstract, unidentifiable fear
that one day that last piece of me will sprout wings and simply fly away
taking me with it?
Just like the narrator in U-P Hallbergs Grand Tour, with his head full of quotes,
I, too, greedily reach out for fragments, figments, phrases, fantasises-
And I pile them on top of each other, building a barricade to protect me from life.
Ironically, the answers are all there, they lie side by side, buried at the heart of that wall,
trapped in between the carefully placed and artistically crafted bricks of words.
If only someone asked the right question, maybe this wall would crumble?
From the top of the world
We fall in love.
We fall.
We buy some more time, and play again.
We desperately seek out the most majestic cliff, the most desolate bridge
only so that we can throw ourselves off them.
Nothing is high enough, we keep aiming for the top.
Is it the thrill?
The wind making our hair dance, making our bodies swirl
We gasp for air, we grasp for something, anything, to hold on to,
but we are alone at the peak of the mountain.
Addicted to that moment just after we lose our balance, just before we start descending
Our bodies floating free, the possibilities endless, happiness a tangible promise
There is naïve hope in that moment.
And then we fall.
Over and over, we keep falling,
hoping that this sentence ends with in love.
the order you seek; the confusion you feel
It seems so easy,
to skip a few steps, to rush by, without words
- without trust.
What is all over your mind must never spill out onto the canvas of everyday,
you won't let it taint the space you create for yourself
The domain which you finally dominate; it is only yours.
So, you swallow your thoughts, you eat your words before they take shape,
drowning them in discipline,
Don't ask, don't tell, don't let anybody in.
But I know your tricks.
Crafting words to create a different reality is my excuse.
Digging to the core only to cover it up with something else is my prerogative.
Spinning analyses for others, so that they forget to analyze me.
It helps, it removes you from the source.
It seems easy, because for a moment that pain is just a word that means something different.
But when all is said and done (or thought and written),
you are still there.
Core exposed, questions unanswered.
And all those eyes wondering why you are digging alone.
Part fact part fiction is what life is.
In a subterranean space hidden from the eyes of the usual, unimpressed expats,
another Brussels is expanding, laying out its pieces before me, drawing me in.
Nobody starts their conversations with "what do you do?",
there are no businesscards, no jaded sense of self-importance.
"What do you write?" they ask,
curiously eyeing each other, trying to see past the exterior.
Erotic science fiction, bruised poems, criminal novels, the occasional surreal short story.
And short sentences.
Like this.
We share tales of fleeting inspiration, scattered notebooks, elusive recognition
and embarrassing drafts imprudently left by the copy machine.
We part without exchanging phone numbers and nobody will look me up on Linkedin.com
Maybe it is all the same in the end, but it is different then and there.
- What do you write?
The question allowing for the disclosure of your entire life, or for making it all up.
To leave out nothing or to selectively open up doors, while closing the windows.
After all, nothing is as true as story.
Trust storytellers to tell you that.
Tu choisis quoi; Un lovestory de 1ère ou 2e classe?
Perhaps it wasn't so much my reluctance to ask what you wanted
As your refusal to acknowledge my questions
As if it was somehow my own fault
that I did not know, did not understand
How you were waking up and falling asleep with someone else
Yet you still wanted more, you still needed me.
Perhaps I was always better off not knowing.
Perhaps you really did not know, either.
You would shamelessly demand
and I would shamefully empty my centre to give you more.
We are each other's worst version
Holding on to one another even though we were both weighed down
We think it's gravity, but it was the anchor of us
We were- we are- sinking.
You asked me once, do you remember?
- Why do we keep doing this?
I sighed, sensed you did not want an honest answer.
- Animal instincts, I replied wearily.
You seemed pleased at the thought.
As if all that guilt you were feeling had been taken away.
I had absolved you, but what I hoped for was my own absolution.
We are children running to the playground,
Trying to navigate, crossing a minefield
we've banned most of what we have in common to numb our bad conscience
The memories, the guilt, the happiness, the hurt
Even fantasies.
This perfectly designed self-deceptive reality would crack, of course.
And how many times can we really break til we're shattered?
Lost and found
Underneath the surface, the bubbles are rising.
It's been a long time coming, like an abstract premonition breathing me in the neck.
This presentiment of me becoming myself.
No, that's not it.
Of the world becoming more accustomed to me, perhaps?
Anaïs Nin wrote "I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself".
And Jeanette Winterson wisely added that "to be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a break-down".
And I do have this sense of things around me finally getting used to the shape of me.
As though the world got tired of trying to change me and decided to let me be.
And to start giving me compliments just for being who I am.
Or, perhaps it was always just me getting in my own way.
So busy trying to be myself that I did not realize I was just playing the part of me.
I cultivated my quirks, but it was always more an act of defiance than the ease of being.
Always cherishing solitude, but I treated even that with defensiveness,
shutting others out so that I could reconciliate with what I thought I had been confined to.
I repeated to myself it's FINE, capital letters, and of course it is. I know that now.
Maybe it's age, maybe it simply takes longer for some people to catch up with themselves.
And as I become accustomed to the real me, others are finding me too.
So, it is like Tolkien wrote:
Not all those who wander are lost.
But then again, some of us don't know we are lost until we are found.
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.
Curious inquiry revisited.
And you think to yourself: "Will she ever stop?"
"Won't she just look around to see all her success, all that abundance; and just be happy?"
Because my obsession with finding answers to inevitable questions disturbs you.
(it déranges you, as the French would say)
But this is not about happiness or sorrow, unless it's about both and everything in between.
It's about finding the meaning of that story.
A story with infinitesimal variations, yet always the same,
surviving centuries, unadulterated, untarnished, ever elusive.
You know the story.
Boy meets girl, serendipity, attraction, happiness, complication, inevitable doom.
Relapse, zemblanity, loss and then; perhaps regret, perhaps nostalgia.
It's the average love story. Yes, we call it love, even if most of the elements are anything but.
Did you ever stop and contemplate this:
In an age of technology, science and capitalism,
- all realms pertaining to the rational mind, reality and trust in the market to make the right decision,
What dictates our lives are still the woes caused by the quest for- or the loss of- love.
So, is desire all about loss? Is love all about desire?
Why is the measure of love loss?
Why aren't you asking yourself these questions, too?
What do you use to seal illogic?
I recognize the signs, see the clouds gathering. Ominously
Catch myself doing the same thing, over and over.
Expecting a different result? - I am not even sure that I do.
But I keep on doing it. I keep doing it.
Is this really my pattern?
All those adjectives I've been told; were they just euphemisms?
How was I supposed to know they meant something else entirely?
It's me, I guess. It was always me.
I break the rules.
I invent stories, I wreck things that others have built.
And in the end, when all is shattered, I blame you.
Like a child, I wave my broken toy in your face,
I push until you feel the guilt.
Do you feel it?
Everything is too simple, nothing ever measures up.
I need the impossible to stare me in the face and say: take a punch!
Knowing I will never be able to, is what keeps me going.
Do you get it? Do you see?
How can I explain that things have no value until they are out of my reach?
How do I tell you these things without making you walk away.
Making me want you, finally.
Favourite mistakes.
It makes me laugh, sometimes, how easily you forget.
And how simple it is for me to evoke those memories in you, with violent clarity.
We judge ourselves harder than anybody else.
There's no need for me to say anything. No reproach, no judgement.
You keep hitting yourself with a hammer. Perhaps because it feels so good when you stop.
When you forget again.
When you re-forget.
I know I am not the one provoking your anger.
I never was.
I cannot hurt you, enrage you, anymore than you do yourself.
But I do know this:
Everything is imprinted with what it once was.
I was that huge mistake you made.
And you are still not done repenting.
Zemblanity revisited
A familiar tug at the heart. A well-known feeling of restlessness.
I cannot know if it's doubt, regret or just the attempt to recapture something lost.
Perhaps nothing but the inexorable discovery of what I did not want to know.
I put you away- all of you, the whole package-
in a glass jar labelled "Do not open until..."
I erased the end of the sentence. Just to be sure.
Every time I moved, I took the jar with me.
Not wanting to relinquish it, feeling safer to be in control of you.
- Don't I know we can never be in control?
So, you got out. Or was that me?
How do we ever know who is on the outside, looking in?
What if I was the one stuck in a jar, running in circles around the lid?
Reminding myself not to let you out, I did not realize I kept myself in.
I kept myself down so that you would stay away.
And here you are. Defying gravity.
Breaking all the rules I wrote in stone.
The glass is shattered, the spell broken.
Just like us.
What was it you wanted?
We are the authors of our own lives.
I always say this; I mostly believe it.
But that is not necessarily enough.
What I fear is to write myself for the audience, rather than for me.
Pleasing the crowd is a lost quest for satisfaction.
Giving people what they want is so easy; instant gratification.
Give a little more, and suddenly you stand there empty-handed,
- empty-hearted.
I must learn to give everything and nothing, sometimes at the same time.
To pick my battles and, at times, to simply walk away.
Most importantly, I must separate the feeling of being needed from that of being wanted.
And understand that neither of them have anything to do with being convenient.
There's a time for compromising with yourself,
but I no longer have that time.
Perhaps this is my most crucial battle.
To stop waiting for your approval, to say no when you come for me.
To forget all the things I did because I thought I had to, but never wanted to.
To be able to do it all again without feeling resentful towards you.
But most of all, without feeling resentful towards myself.
I'm working on making mine a little bigger.
Just let me in, I'll make my own space.
"The only selfish life is a timid one.
To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve
both overvalues the self and undervalues what the self is"
Sometimes we need friends to help us get over ourselves.
To see in such clarity what is and what can be,
Maybe most of all, why all the things I perceive as problems,
are just locked up boxes to which I have not yet found the keys.
Why expect to be something that I could never be?
When people continue to single me out for things I am trying so hard to oppress?
Am I an excerpt from my own life?
With pages ripped out, thrown aside, put away, so that only my favourite parts will remain.
Hoping- for what? for whom?
Should I acknowledge the fiction that I am?
Learn to navigate in this place called reality, which I am consistently denying?
Let things go, let people go that do not respect this framework?
Allow failures of feelings as well as real ones.
Would that trap me or free me?
I must be my own definition,
without adjusting for inflation.
Confession of a maverick.
I am reluctant to believe that everybody's destined to play a certain part,
that no matter what we do, we end up where we begin.
Actually, I think I violently reject that.
But the universe doesn't care what I believe, I know that.
I've played the same part in everybody's story.
Perhaps it's karmic retribution, because I am so determined to create my own one?
I am the one you don't notice, unless you are really looking.
Weird and intriguing, but unconventionally plain.
the strange one in the corner of your eye, close enough that you will see and remember.
Oh, you will remember.
Five years later I will be on your speed dial, solving all your problems.
I will make you feel good about all the bad choices you made.
I will reassure you for choosing that other girl.
Maybe I'll even say you're better off.
Possibly, I will be right.
Definitely, you will be wrong.
But it won't make a difference.
The story goes on.
And, quite frankly, it isn't your fault.
..and above all to difficulty
Once, long ago, I was heartbroken.
He looked at me and told me not to worry.
"It just takes longer for special persons to find the right one"
And though it was a cliché and he was a Latin lover, I was young and impressionable.
Suffices to say, it struck a chord.
But now I am starting to wonder.
How special can one person really be?
Did I just let those words define me because I liked their weight on my body?
Am I spoiled for life because I believed him?
And perhaps doomed to wander the world like this,
not knowing I am just like everybody else.
Only more difficult to please.
