I Am the Walrus

Listening to a tedious conversation about weariness I started thinking about the two remedies, both rather the conseqences of quite opposite causes. The first one: If you are tired then try to get some sleep. That is if the cause of your tiredness is physical action and exhaustion. The second kind of weariness quite contrarily may be caused by lack of movement. So get up, do something, get yourself exhausted, and then you may heed the first suggestion.

The water is the place to be - if you are the walrus!

Blessing

Bless me in your imperfection, bless me because of all your fruitless searches, bless me because of your darkness, bless me with your dirty hands, bless me because you have lived through it all, bless me!

Stropdrager*

I salute all those people who wear as a decoration exactly the thing that was meant to humiliate their ancestors.


*ropewearer (usually around the neck), a nickname for people from the city of Ghent


Here there are some "stropdragers" or rather "stropendragers" as they are members of a guild.

Preisgeben

spontaneous surrender

Dance, my darling, with your body and mind.

Indignant

I'd really love to break your heart (of stone), because truth is always revolutionising.

A Mother's Perspective

Ma mère elle a quelque chose
Quelque chose dangereuse
Quelque chose d'une allumeuse
Quelque chose d'une emmerdeuse

Elle a des yeux qui tuent
Mais j'aime ses mains sur mon corps
J'aime l'odeur au-dessous de ses bras
Oui je suis comme ça

Dans les yeux de ma mère
Il y a toujours une lumière

Ma mère elle m'écoute toujours
Quand je suis dans la merde
Elle sait quand je suis con et faible
Et quand je suis bourré comme une baleine
C'est elle qui sait que mes pieds puent
C'est elle qui sait comment j'suis nu
Mais quand je suis malade
Elle est la reine du suppositoire

Dans les yeux de ma mère

 

"You're wrong. My mother loves everybody!" - My son to a friend, who believed that I did not like him. And my son is right, although if I really love somebody I like to challenge them according to their abilities and possibilities.

 

 

The Constant

the magnificent wrestle with my faith

A Wide Difference

Telling uplifting stories to reach people's conscience and soothing and lulling them after they have listened to some horrible story is one thing. Yet a completely other is to be able to raise hell in order to prevent exactly such horrible stories from repeating themselves.

The one orator was Protestant and the other Catholic.

Happening

Most things are far more intuitive than the scholars could or would grasp, but then they know the result and can but think backwarts. It's like the quite odd feeling when one has children, there must have been a time when they did not yet exist, but looking back they appear to have been present always, even if only as a possibility.

Look At Something or Look From Something

It's all no good lest it gets you to get involved.

Provocation

Vive ma liberté

pour toi et le monde entier.

"Zekerheid of vrijheid? Ik kies voor vrijheid. Want zekerheid is relatief. Niks is zeker. Maar vrijheid wel./ Security of freedom? I choose freedom. Because security is relative. Nothing is secure. But freedom however." - Arno (Hintjens)

Immaculate

Whenever did this Protestant notion that a person has to be immaculate in every aspect establish itself?!

It's tainting the soul and making us forget the heart - communion.

"A womp bop a lu bop a lop bam boom"

Balance

My Libra heart will yearn for it, but balance is nothing to be sought  as long as there is a right and wrong. And there ought to be because I am not indifferent. Whatever runs within, runs deep down and dirty.

Reflecting

Through it all the "mea culpa" is resonating. Still it is not depressing at all, but saying get up "And deal with others better."*

* Cymbeline, William Shakespeare

Tidiness vs Beauty

She enquired when all those plants were at long last to be cut down.

But look, the hollyhocks are blooming, the lavender is still smelling.

On Second Thought

As a child I had this recurring nightmare that one day the whole world would belong to just one person. At this time I soothed my mind with the thought that surely even the wealhty love some humn company, at least to do the mean jobs that nobody is keen on doing. Yet nowadays I'm starting to feel not so sure about this any more...

What would the fairy tale "The Wishing Table" look like if it were told today? Maybe the inn-keeper and/or the goat would win in the end...

Singularity

The promise and curse of time looming over you.

The Warlike State

 or rather the lack thereof in the Rhineland


So when Napoleon was approaching Cologne one soldier of the town guard allegedly shouted indignantly:"Don't shoot! Can't you see that there are people standing here?!" Yet this is no match for the city of Aachen, where they reputedly paid their guard so badly that they had to resort to doing odd jobs, like minding children, to make a living. The result was that there was aparently nobody around to defend the city.

"I'm a lover, not a fighter."

What a Pity

The charitable emotion so seldomly evoked or doted on nowadays, probably because it is perceived as being weak. You may rage, you may scream, you should take revenge.

Don't give a shit!


Yet I do.





Pity my enemies.

"Surprise, Surprise

So you rub your eyes" - Urban Dance Squad


Art is only (good) if the spectator/ the audience lets it happen.

The Blame Game

Thinking again about Luc Tuymans' action and what the press and people in general took it to mean, i.e. the deliberate destruction of high monetary value in the face of poverty, it makes me wonder if in some twist the artist sort of gets the blame for this poverty.


In normal times, i.e. times that adher to some rules and reason, I would think it ludicrous to blame artists, especially artists, for the economic shortcomings of the prevailing system - artists who in their majority form a large section of the less well-off part of society, mostly by their own choice -, but these are surreal times.

Uplift

Having climbed the steeple he was haunted by the prospect of the bell stroke expecting some sort of earthquake that would send him right down to the ground. So I offered my hand for support. Yet with the chime resonating he began running all over the place playing on his party blower.

Indulge in Histrionics

be slightly unattached without losing your solid ground

see it play out right in front of you


and then be the actor and act

for you have seen and felt it all

Embracing

There is freedom in the "Yes!".



Or only the "Yes!" uttered in freedom is a yes.

To say "Yes!" is an act of freedom.

Spectacle

grace - gracias





























neither orthodox nor protestant but catholic

Acrobats

So the 'strong man' is the man who never changes his views.

determined, pathetic and dangerous

yet "out of great strength leaps transparency" - Christoph Letkowski - Volkskind

The most powerful position may yet eventually be to be able to jump across one's own shadow.

The Benefit of Being Alive

As the devil is grinning in front of you, just thumb your nose at him, do not believe him and reverse.


I like those fairy-tales where somebody is about to forfeit his soul unless he can perform something that the devil is not capable of. And it's always some simple thing like snapping your fingers or clicking your tongue.

Solid Solitude

His foremost trouble is that he is utterly alone in his perception of events, that he doesn't know whom to trust and that the one person he had turned to betrayed him.



Some reason to feign madness and yes, it is feigned.

Leap of Faith

to leave this solid ground, your foundation of decades, your home, because it no longer is, it has shifted, there has been a landslide

it's the courageous thing to do

The Miser-able Rich

 

 

With this there grows

In my most ill-composed affection such

A stanchless avarice that, were I king,

I should cut off the nobles for their lands,

Desire his jewels and this other’s house.

And my more-having would be as a sauce

To make me hunger more, that I should forge

Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,

Destroying them for wealth.

 

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

 

It sometimes feels to me that the whole of philosophy is but a meditation on Shakespeare. - Emmanuel Levinas

 

 

It's in the DNA

from one side of the border to the other, this rebellious nature, this agitation, certainly not accepting exactly this - the line, the stone dividing us.

 

Once the boundary stone had been hit by a bus and in consequence had become askew, Dutch students felt encouraged to completely remove it. - In 1959 they already believed in a Europe without borders. 

Living on the border all my life has certainly left an impact, a desire of wanting to cross them. My uncle once told me that as a child he would cross two borders back and forth with his bike in two hours' time.