Brussels Nerds' Creative Writing Club

Johnny

2012-02-10T11:37:00.001+01:00

I sit down at the bar. I sit down, I order a drink, I order a drink, I drink it, I order another one. I sit here, I look at the bottles, I look at Johnny, I drink. People are coming and going, only Johnny is staying with me. He pours me a drink, he doesn’t say it was enough, he pours it, I drink.

There are other regulars too, sitting at the bar, we don’t talk much, we drink. Johnny drinks too, he doesn’t talk much, he pours and he drinks. When someone is filled, soaked, ready to leave, he leaves. I am never ready, I am never filled.

We don’t get sick, we don’t get bored. We are professionals, the tightest circle of guests around Johnny, we are not guests, we are family. We are an orchestra and our conductor is Johnny . He conducts and we drink.

We are family. We are loyal to Johnny and Johnny is loyal to us. He would always serve us first, before serving the irregulars.

Today I arrive early, there are only two other regulars and one irregular at the bar, Mickey, Elise, and a blind man with a black dog. I sit down next to Elise, she greets me I greet her. Johnny comes and says:

- Hello Marianne, he says, hello hello.

- Hello Johnny, I say, good to see you Johnny.

- Good to see you too, Marianne, he says, good to see you too.

- Good to see you too, Johnny.

The blind man puts a coin on the table, and clears his throat. Johnny pours two glasses of wine, he puts one in front of me first and, only then, he puts the other in front of the blind man.

- Marianne, Johnny says, could you keep an eye on things for a bit? I gotta go to the loo.

- Sure Johnny, I say, and I’m keeping an eye on things. I’m keeping an eye on Mickey, an eye on Elise, an eye on the blind man, and on the black dog. And an eye on the door, where anyone could come in anytime and make trouble. An eye on Mickey, and Elise, and the blind man, the dog, the door. No one moves, I’m keeping an eye on them, Johnny can trust me, there won’t be trouble, I will keep an eye on them, so there won’t be trouble. He can trust me, Johnny.

‘We are the same,’ Mickey says, and laughs loudly, spitting on the bar, ‘Aren’t we the same, Elise?’

‘We surely are,’ Elise laughs with Mickey.

‘We are the same, aren’t we, Marianne?’ – Mickey goes on.

I nod, and I laugh with Mickey, keeping an eye on him. I nod and laugh and I don’t argue so there won’t be trouble while Johnny is on the toilet, but that’s not true that we are the same, we are not the same. Johnny asked me to keep an eye on things, we are not the same.

‘We are the same,’ Mickey continues, ‘We came here first, coz we felt miserable, and now we are miserable.’

He laughs and Elise laughs with him and I’m keeping an eye on them.

But that’s not true, I don’t come here because I feel miserable, I come here for Johnny.

Intro to Disgrace (in K. Vonnegut style)

2011-12-17T14:04:00.002+01:00

All this happened, more or less. I did sleep with someone half my age, who could have been my daughter. I did get fired from my job and did move to the countryside. My daughter was raped by three men. Her neighbours did pretend that they didn’t notice a thing.

When I can’t sleep at night I wonder if my daughter wonders if I am any different from those men who raped her. You need to know that I am different. Those men were full of hatred when they did what they did. I was full of love when I did what I did, or at least ’love’ is the word I could find in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that is the closest to what I felt. I still have my doubts though, but who hasn’t.

My daughter doesn’t talk much to me anymore. I don’t talk much to her either. It’s difficult to tell if it’s the pity or the relief that stops me talking to her. Then again, we still jolly well behave.

I live with my daughter in a place that would be God’s anus if God had a digestive system. God beyond doubt doesn’t have a digestive system, but had he had one, I would be living right at the end of it, with a red neon sign above my head, that would say: EXIT. You can’t get any further from here without stepping into outer space.

I’m not here because I like to be here. I’m here because I don’t have any other choice. I don’t have any other choice because I have difficulties with controlling the strongest drive mammals have on this planet, that requires them to match their genitals with the genitals of other mammals, regardless their age. If God had genitals (which he beyond doubt doesn’t) he wouldn’t ask us to control ours either.

Doll

2011-12-17T13:55:00.002+01:00

My body is laying on the bed and Mark’s body is laying on my body. The two bodies are moving slowly, rhythmically. We could not possibly be closer to each other than we are now, and we couldn’t be more separate. I feel his warm, wine coloured breath on my face and his sweat tickles my skin. We are pretending and we both know it. I want to stroke Mark’s face and tell him that we don’t have to, but I don’t.

Our bodies are laying on the bed next to each other. Something uncomfortable is coming and maybe I could prevent it. I could say something comforting. I could ask him a question about how his day went or cuddle up to him and hug him. Our bodies are laying next to each other with the appropriate distance between them, with a distance that is right and suffocating in its rightness. I sense that Mark is looking at me, my closed eyelids serve as shields.

’You know,’ he says. ’You know.’

I know but I don’t let him know that I know.

I sense his cold hand on my shoulder for a second.

‘Hanna?’ he asks, ‘Are you up?’

Mmm. I say.

I hear him sighing. I open my eyes, and turn my head in his direction. He is looking at me in the dark. I look back at the ceiling.

The bed is slightly and rhythmically moving under me again, Mark is scratching himself. I want to ask him to stop scratching himself.

‘You know, Hanna,’ he says, ‘you know I was thinking about you, just now, and, and as I was thinking, all of a sudden I realized what you are. You are an inflatable doll.‘

I sit up in the dark. I guess he’s right.

‘That’s what your function is. That is what you are. So shouldn’t I treat you accordingly? Do you have any arguments why shouldn’t I?

I push the blanket off me.

’Of course you don’t have any. Because you are an inflatable doll.’

I stand up and I walk out of the bedroom. I walk through the dark living room, its darkness and silence is comforting, the cold floor makes my bare feet ache. I open the door of the toilet. The King is sitting on the toilet, his elbows are on his knees, his chin is in his palms, his crown is balancing insecurely on the top of his bald, shiny head. He wakes up as I switch on the light. He stands up slowly, like and old man, lets me take his place, and pats my shoulder before leaving. I sit down on the toilet and smile at him. He smiles back at me sleepily and closes the door behind him

In the restaurant

2011-12-17T13:44:00.001+01:00

- I only have one question. It’s my birthday and you said you were gonna…. coz it’s my birthday. So one question. Help me understand it, ok? I need to… I need to understand. Will you help me understand it? Will you? Say that you will. God damn it.

- I will.

- What?

- I said I would. I will.

- What made you who you are? I want to know. I want to know what happened to you that made you… who you are.

- Mark, please.

- No, no, no, no, no ’please’, tonight. There is no ’please’ tonight, all right? Today is my day, you said so, you said that today was my day, ok? Did you say it or did you not say it? So stop saying ’please’. You said that you would do anything I asked from you today. You said that didn’t you?

- Yeah, I said that.

- There we go. There we go. So, I want you to tell me what happened to you that.. the thing that fucked you up.

Silence.

- You’re not gonna tell me. I knew it. You’re not gonna tell me anything. You’re just gonna, you’re just gonna sit there in silence until I lose all my dignity and shut up. You’re just gonna do that. Coz you always do that. That’s what you do.

- That’s not what I do.

- Yeah, that’s what you do. Coz you’re evil. Aren’t you evil. Answer me, will you?

- I am not evil.

- It’s my day. It’s my goddamn birthday. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. I’m so happy, Hanna, I’m so happy. Look at me. Look at me how happy I am. Waiter! Waiter! Come here, please! Look at us we’re so happy.

- Mark…

- What? What’s wrong? I said please. Didn’t I say please? Didn’t I? I was a good boy. Waiter! Please, bring another bottle of champagne. We’re celebrating.

- Yes, sir. Anything else? Desert maybe?

- No. No desert maybe.

- For the lady?

- Don’t ask her. She’s not a lady. She’s a robot. A robowoman. Ro-bo-wo-man. She can’t speak poor thing.

- No, thank you. –Hanna says. – I’m fine.

The waiter takes notes and leaves. The couple from the neighbouring table is staring at them.

- What are you looking at? She is really not a woman. She doesn’t have hair on her body. And she’s not getting old. She’s from another planet.

- Mark, stop this. – says Hanna.

- OK, I’ll stop. I’ll stop if you help me understand. I want clarity. (…) I’m so tired Hanna. I’m, I’m so tired. I wanna go home.

- You wanna go home?

- No. You gotta talk to me. Coz it’s my fuckin’ birthday. And then we’ll go home.

- OK.

- OK?

- OK.

- Did you say OK? Did you just say OK?

- Yeah, I said OK.

- So you’re gonna… what are you doing?

- What?

- Are you smiling?

- I’m not smiling.

- Yes you’re smiling. You’re laughing at me.

- I’m not laughing at you. I’m just nervous, OK? I’m sorry. I have to laugh when I’m nervous, you know that I have to laugh when I’m nervous.

- Fuck your nervousness. Fuck it. Let’s go home. I wanna sleep.

One syllable writing - afternoon in a park

2011-12-16T10:15:00.000+01:00

I lie down in front of her, on the grass.
“Do you think we’ll go to hell, for what we did?”, she asks. She laughs.
I look up. The tree branch makes a shape on the sky which makes me think of a hand. My gran’s hand, as she helped me get up from a fall.
Pink blooms stick out from the hand. They speak of spring and life and light. I reach out, to touch her face. Her cheek and ear and nose. I trace out her lips. They are soft. Red. I can’t breathe – for a bit.
I say, “No, I don’t think so. It felt too good.”
Her hand finds mine, moves it back to her lips, to be met with a kiss.
A leaf falls.
The sky up there looks down. The sun shines through the branch. The pink buds bloom. I smile.

VISITE

2011-10-20T17:20:00.001+02:00

¡ La reine de Saba !
La reine du samedi soir.
Ma reine, cette fin de semaine.

RECTIFIED CALIGRAMMES , (Exercise chez Monica 12.10.2011)

2011-10-13T12:03:00.004+02:00

1.

Your schedule palpitates
but you heart

always

beats

regularly

-------------

2.

What´s the point for a tightrope walker to have an umbrella

when he´s falling so quickly

as the rain

-----------

3.

-"In a coach sits an engineer. He´s designing a long train full of empty minded people"
- Where did you get this ?
- Well, I found it on my i pod while coming home in the subway...

4.

Breast hurts because it is not yet
or it has been.

PROJET DE GRAFFITTI DANS UN BATIMENT ABANDONÉ

2011-10-04T11:07:00.000+02:00

La spéculation est le miroir de ton calcul

¡ Oh belle ,

qui traverse la ville

Talking Sheep

2011-09-08T21:12:00.001+02:00

Leia carried her enormous rucksack off the bus, a bit disappointed there was no handsome country side guy willing to help her. Her map said Mr. Pritzgenschtall’s farm was only 200 metres away. It would have been a small effort for Mr. Pritzgenschtall to pick her up from the bus station. Not very gentlemen, these farmer men.

Hans Pritzgenschtall took a last look at the living room: a vase of freshly-picked flowers on the table, the calendar on the right month, everything seemed in order. Would this Leia girl know that he was a single farmer? (He figured he would introduce himself as single, not divorced. But then he realised he still had some pictures of his ex-wife in the hall and decided it would probably better to be honest anyway.)

Hans was in love as soon as he opened the door. Immediately he fell some hundred kilos heavier, thinking of how he would try to hide this childish love for an entire month from this beautiful female specimen. Would she dance salsa? It was the new thing he had dared to learn and apparently this was hot "in town".

So, tell me about your, er, PrD., Hans asked.

- PhD? Leia smiled.

- Uh yes, tell me what it is about! If you think I can understand it, of course. Haha.

- Oh it’s very simple. I am finding out how sheep talk to each other.

- Well, that’s something I know about! You’ve come to the right place! I can tell you they say a lot of bèèèèèèèh and BAAAAH!

(Hans did not know why he had to scream out that last sound at such a loud tone. It made him feel embarrassed about himself.)

- Yeah, they do say that, but actually by doing so they tell each other a lot more than we think! When they say bèèèh, they for example mean: You’re pooping in my area. Whereas béééh means: You’re hot.

Hans looked at Leia with big eyes, even though his eyes were small. How could this girl presume all this, while most likely it’s the first time in her life she is staying at a farm? He should know about this much better than her! But then, this girl had this very high degree, so he did not feel he could get into a debate about this.

So instead he asked carefully: how did you get all this wisdom?

- I will show you, Leia said. If you show me your sheep, I will do some translation for you.

As they headed off to the field, Hans started to feel a little anxious. What if his sheep would talk negatively about him? They have been able to do this their entire lives without ever getting caught for it. And beside Bertha and Hans and Stine and his parents several years ago they had not seen many people. What would their impression of him be? Hopefully it would not be too embarrassing; he would certainly not want Leia to know.

So they sat down on a rock, near the sheep, and the sheep remained silent. They probably could tell Leia understood Sheep and remind silent on purpose, Hans figured. But how would they be able to tell?

Then one sheep made a bèh! sound. It was very short.

Leia said it meant: who is that creature?

It’s what sheep always say when they encounter something new that they do not like, she explained.

It took a long time before a bigger sheep answered bèèèèèèèèèèh, which was supposed to mean: oh you wussy, why should you care. Go eat grass in that corner.

Hans asked Leia: aren’t you insulted? They are not very friendly about you. Before Leia could answer, suddenly al the sheep started yelling multiple kinds of BEEEHHHHHHs with different intonations and in varying volumes, and Leia looked both fascinated and worried at the same time.

Yes, well.. She fell silent, which did not seem to be something that happened to her very often. It is quite shocking indeed, she murmured.

Leia really looked a little pale.

Maybe we can go back to the house for a while, is that OK for you?

- Sure, Hans said.

- I’m really sorry, Leia said. I’ve never heard sheep going crazy like that before. It was really, well, I guess I shouldn’t tell you.

If Hans were honest with himself, he felt quite relieved. He did not dare to ask what exactly had shocked Leia, because it would be indiscreet, and because deep down he did not want to know himself. This evening, and he smiled by the thought of it, he would teach Leia how to dance salsa in his living room.

Tax Return

2011-07-27T23:21:00.000+02:00

I have never liked filling the forms for the tax return. I remember the first time, when it was new and exciting, so many years ago. I also remember that feeling being substituted by an incredible boredom and the notion that I would never manage to do it by myself.
That is the exact feeling that I'm having right now.
I look at the stack of papers that I have in front of me and the delicious idea of suicide briefly crosses my mind.
"Would you like some Doritos and a glass of wine, dear?", my wife knows me better than myself. In any other occasion I would have said yes without even letting her finish the sentence.
"Yes. No. Whatever. Later. I love you.", I say instead, and immediatly feel like an idiot.
"O.K. Love you too.", she is the best woman in the world.
I look out of the window, where the sun is shining, kids are playing and couples are holding hands and saying nonsenses to each other. Except this is Belgium and the sky is concrete grey. And except for the fact that from my window I only see a big, dirty, ugly building.
The mind is an awesome thing.
There is a box where I have to write my income from last year. I consider throwing some random numbers at it, but instead I shout over my shoulder.
"This is torture! Do you know where my pay sheets are?!"
"Under the blue folder to your right!", the voice of Layla is like music to my ears, so I have to repeat the question.
"Where?!"
"Blue folder! To your right!"
"Thanks, love!"
There is a blue folder to my right, and the papers are underneath it.
I have to add all the numbers together, though, and my basic math skills have abandoned me. Memories of exams pass through my mind. I can feel the fear in my lips again.
Thank god for calculators, the inventor should have been made World Hero or something.
I write the numbers and the box accepts its defeat.
The kitchen is paradise right now. I take a mouthful of Doritos and wash them down with some wine. I kiss my wife and I suggest watching a movie. To her, I am transparent. She knows what I have in mind. She takes me by the hand and leads me to the bedroom.

Happy vegetables

2011-07-24T12:26:00.002+02:00

When he arrived to the supermarket, Uncle George went directly to the cold department, for he knew himself as a very efficient and straightforward person and valued himself for owning these noble characteristics. It was a Friday evening, and Uncle George was in charge of buying something that would serve at the main course of the dinner party. In the cold department all the meat and frozen food were stored. But for his bitter surprise, it was very cold in the cold department. He hadn’t felt this cold in years. He felt so cold that it activated the fight or flight response in his brain. Fight or flight or freeze. From these options, flight was clearly the right response. So he opened the freezer that was next to him, took out the first thing that his hand could grab and left the cold department.
It was only at the cashier where he noticed what he actually bought. He noticed it at exactly the same moment when the lady in white with tattooed eyebrows asked him:
‘Would you like anything else, Sir?’
It was a straightforward question. Firm but just. If he wanted something else, this was the moment to say so.
Uncle George looked in the basket in front of him. What he saw was an Iglo bag of carrots and peas laying in it. The carrots and the peas were mixed. The mixture was called ’Happy Vegetables.’
Uncle George looked back at the lady and her tattooed eyebrows.
‘No,’ he said resolutely.
There was an explanation on the bag that clarified why the product was called Happy Vegetables. Uncle George noticed this when he was already sitting in his car, observing his pray, trying to figure out what could be done out of it for dinner. The mixture was called happy vegetables, because Beta Carotin helped the brain produce opiate and opiate made people feel happy. On the bag, Uncle Iglo explained that if children ate happy vegetables every day, a kind penguin would take them to Happy Vegetable Country. So, all in all, it was clearly a good buy.
However, Uncle George was not sure if Uncle Iglo’s reasoning would convince his wife too that he made the right choice. But going back to the supermarket was not an option. The lady at the cashier already asked him if he wanted something else and he said no. Going back would have been admitting publicly that he was a weak character. Someone, who didn’t know what he wanted.
So Uncle George started the engine, and drove home listening to evergreens in the radio, with the bag of Happy Vegetables on the passenger seat.
Aunt Alexandra was already waiting for him in the kitchen. She had just finished preparing the potato salad. Uncle George stood behind her, covered her eyes with his right palm, and put the bag of Happy Vegetables on the table in front of her. Aunt Alexandra got slightly aroused by this sudden blindfolding, and pushed her buttocks close to her husband crotch. Uncle George stepped one step backwards automatically, which made it clear that he had no erotic intentions. This movement left both of them standing in an unnatural posture. It also left Aunt Alexandra somewhat irritated.
’I got something very special for tonight,’ Uncle George said.
’What is it?’ Aunt Alexandra asked. She forced herself to smile despite her irritation. She smiled because she knew that it was smiling that good natured people did when they were offered a gift, even when they were slightly irritated. Aunt Alexandra thought of herself as a very good natured person.
’Something special for tonight’s dinner.’ Uncle George lowered his hand.
Aunt Alexandra looked at the vegetables and didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything because her mind was blank. This often happened to her when she was about to say something particularly offensive. It was a defence mechanism of her brain that kept her marriage alive in the last ten years. It was a common defence mechanism among the brains of people who thought of themselves as good natured persons. Over the time it made these people embittered, but Aunt Alexandra had another defence mechanism to cover her embitterment. Aunt Alexandra’s brain was a perfect matrix of hundreds of defence mechanisms.
’They are happy vegetables’. Uncle George whispered.
Aunt Alexandra nodded.
’We can make a ratatouille out of them.’ Uncle George said.
‘A ratatouille.’ Aunt Alexandra repeated. Repetition was another defence mechanism that helped her win time when her reptilian brain was urging her to bite the person nearby.
’A happy ratatouille.’ Uncle George said.
’A happy ratatouille.’ Aunt Alexandra repeated.

NA ZDROWIE !

2011-07-19T10:18:00.001+02:00

NA ZDROWIE !

Love each other
as you love your liver.

So I did ,
and drank the vodka
in a single shot.
Cul sec.

The comedian, who was secretly fat

2011-07-17T06:49:00.008+02:00

Andrej, the secretly fat comedian was standing at the train station with his wife, Veronika. They were waiting for the train that was going to take Veronika to the city where her sister gave birth recently.

Not even Veronika knew that Andrej was fat. Andrej kept his weight carefully in secret since 2008 when he got fat as a result of a period of binge eating, which was the result of a period of intense performance anxieties. The spouses didn’t see each other naked since their son was born seven years ago.

Veronika didn’t suspect that her husband was fat, but she knew that Andrej was keeping something in secret from her. She thought that her husband had a lover, the liberated, communist wife of the local orchestra’s blind conductor. Veronika had an old-fashioned view on men, which allowed her to accept the suspected adultery. According to this view men were like infantile porks, who couldn’t help themselves when it came to food or genitals. However, Veronika didn’t wish to be confronted with the truth, because that would have put her in the unpleasant position where one has to take a position, and Veronika didn’t like to take positions, in fear of regretting them later.

‘You can go home now,’ Veronika said. ‘I will get on the train.’

She kissed Andrej’s soft, big, cold face, first on the left cheek and then on the right. Then Andrej kissed her soft, cold cheeks back. All their cheeks were kissed now.

'Don’t forget to clean his nose in the evening.' – Veronika said.

She meant the nose of their son, Levin.

'I will not forget to clean his nose in the evening.' Andrej said seriously.

In his private life he was always serious. After fifteen years of being a comedian, he was truly sick of joking. When a friend told a joke at the dinner table, he wanted to cry. He compared his situation to the gynaecologist’s who, after a long day at work, has to look at his wife’s vagina.

'It’s important for hygiene.' Veronika said. 'The nose needs to be clean.'

'I agree.' – Andrej said and he meant it.

'Bye now!'

Veronika climbed the stairs of the train, but then she heard her husband shouting after her, so she turned back.

This was what Andrej shouted after her:

‘Wait!’

Veronika waited.

Andrej stepped closer and continued shouting: ‘I forgot to tell you something!’

‘You don’t need to shout Andrej. I hear you well.’

‘I have to tell you something Veronika.’ Andrej said. He was sweating. Not only he was sweating: he was breathing heavily too.

‘So tell it!’

‘Veronika,’ Andrej said, ‘I’m fat.’

And at the moment he said it, he regretted it. He never told his dirty secret to anyone, hoping that eventually he would lose weight and leave his fatness - as a bad dream - behind. But now he said it and it felt that the spoken words made his fatness real, irreversible; that they validated and enforced a fat existence from now on, forever. How he wished he could go back in time.

Veronika felt relieved. She was worried for a second that Andrej would reveal his affair with the communist, and she would need to take a position.

‘You’re joking,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Andrej said and nodded vigorously. ‘I was joking.’

Veronika never heard her husband making a joke before. She was never interested in humour or comedy so she never went to see Andrej’s show in the theatre.

‘Ha Ha,’ Veronika said. As far as she knew, this was the appropriate thing to say when someone made a joke.

‘Ha Ha,’ said Andrej too.

Veronika tapped her thigh uncertainly. This was what people did in movies when they laughed.

‘Ha Ha.’ she said again. For a second, she thought about adding: Hilarious!. Then she decided not to. She only said: ‘Bye now!’, and stepped in the darkness of the carriage.

Andrej sighed deeply. He adjusted his corsette and waved goodbye.

One Day I Wrote - Our creative writing workshop!

2011-06-15T11:56:00.034+02:00

One day you want to write a story. One day you will write a book. One day you will become a famous writer. Sounds like daydreaming? Not necessarily:

Write for One Day at our creative writing workshop!

When: 2 July, 10.00 - 17.30 h

Where: The Hub Brussels

37 rue du Prince Royal, (Porte de Namur metro)

Costs: 10€ including sandwich lunch and creative cocktail

Register: by sending an email to: brusselsnerds@gmail.com

What to bring along: paper & pen, a book (for a book swap), and your magnificent creative mood.

During the day we will work on character, conflict & climax, with the goal to have a full short story and a cocktail at the end!

We are also happy to announce the London-based author Oliver Harris is crossing the channel to tell us what it is like to get your book published. He will be joining the workshop to talk about anything a writer with aspirations to publish comes across.
Read a review of his book here.

You can also find us on Facebook.

Click on "read more" to find the rest of the programme!

Programme

10h00-10h30 Arrival and registration, welcome
Please pay € 10,- in cash and provide us a book you want to give away (it might make someone happy at the end of the day...)

10h30-11h45 Getting started & Characters
Afraid you will not get any inspiration? Do not worry. To get the writing going, we start off by using inspirational tools that should get tickle the imagination-provoking parts of your brain.

11h45-12h45 Presentation by Oliver Harris (UK)
This freshly-published author from London will tell us how he got inspired and how he carried out the crafting process to get published.

12h45-13h45 Lunch break
Sandwich lunch offered

13h45-14h30 Conflict & Climax  
Now that you have developed a character, how does it get into a conflict? In order for your ideas to become a story, your character will have to overcome challenges.  

14h30-15h00 Coffee break   

15h00-15h45 WRITE! 
Ah, finally we will give you some time to leave you alone and do some proper writing!  

15h45-16h45 Feedback in little groups
In little groups you will present your freshly-written stories and give feedback on your fellow-writers. And no, there is nothing scary about this, trust us :-)

16h45-17h00 ‘Nano-stories’
Summarise your story in 10 words  

17h00-17h30 Conclusion & (voluntary) presentation of nano-stories  

17h30 Creative cocktail

18h00 End
Do not forget to take along a book from the book swap!   

The Barbecue Man

2011-02-07T01:31:00.000+01:00

They called him The Barbecue Man. Barbecue was his flavour; when pizza was ordered, he asked for barbecue; when he went to McDonald's, it was a McBarbecue he ate. He had a stash of barbecue sauce bottles in his house that he replenished quite often.

That one day, they were at a bar watching a football game. Everyone was having a pint of Jupiler, but for him. He didn't like beer. Well, he did, but only that very dark kind of beer. It reminded him of spare ribs with barbecue sauce.
His childhood had been hard.

Anyway, they were watching that football match and he was having that spare rib flavoured beer when the referee signalled half-time. And then, there it was. The new ad from Pringles®.
Apparently, the mad scientists that develop new flavours for the not-a-potato-snack company had synthetized the essence of the barbecue taste and so the new Pringles® Barbecue arrived to the market.

The Barbecue Man opened his eyes wide in disbelief. Finally, the field of not-potato-snacks opened to his tastebuds! Years of envy of other people when they popped open a can were over! Their satisfied smiles when they had a cheese-with-onion wave-shaped mouthful would be his!

They saw him leaving his beer on the table, getting his coat and rushing to the door, and they followed him. He looked like a lioness hunting, eyes and ears open, nose sniffing for a prey.

The shop's was the only light on in the alley. Inside, a pakistani man was reading the newspaper while listening to the news on the radio and watching a BBC News program on a muted TV.
He jolted in surprise when The Barbecue Man slammed the door open. And he was followed by a crowd.

The Barbecue Man looked with his red eyes to the shopkeeper and said:
- Pringles®. Barbecue.

The shopkeeper gave him the can and The Barbecue Man looked eagerly at it while he payed. Then he popped it open and pulled the lid out. A barbecue smell flooded the shop. The Barbecue Man took a single Pringle® from the can. He handled it like it was a newborn child. Then, slowly, almost reverently, he bit into it.

It tasted like egg.

Ceilings always look down at floors

2010-12-07T09:39:00.002+01:00

I am the floor, nice to meet you, it said.

Solid wood of rectangular shape
In a perfect, logical, grid.

Flat
It can not look up.
Though,
I can feel it staring at me
In the quiet of its shyness.

I can feel
Unfamiliar insecurity
Arising from a frame always being walked on
And never really admired.

Subjected to the bottom
It stays,
Soiled by tears of rain and snow,
Repaired by the wind turmoil,
Blind at the peaceful sunset.

And though
Part of the same home
Only one between us
Can reach the view below and above.

I am the ceiling, I say, nice to meet you too.

Rondemberg Vs. His Mom

2010-12-06T15:20:00.002+01:00

"Man, she can talk", Rondemberg thought. He himself only talked when forced by his mom. "Peter, say hello to Ms. Largeois." or "Peter, thank the mister for that cookie." Damn, why should he thank him if the cookie was obviously more than three days old? And besides, he wanted to go play.
His mom seemed like she had ten eyes, she was always aware of everything that happened around her. "Peter, don't eat dirt." or "Peter, where do you think you're going?". Well, he had just seen the most beautiful earthworm and was going to check it out, maybe pick it up and throw it to the neighbour's daughter. Rondemberg admired her hay-blonde hair and her ponytails. He hadn't seen it was raining. Or cared about his new clothes.
It didn't matter that he left his mom to do her bidding. She was nosey and always messing with his affairs. "Peter, where's the lighter of the kitchen?" or "Peter, have you seen my iPhone?". Well, he needed those things for his masterplan. What was she doing inquiring about it? Why couldn't she left him alone?
Thinking those things, he was falling asleep in his bed. But then Rondemberg noticed that the night light wasn't on. She had forgotten! The shadows took a menacing appearance and he started hearing noises in the closet and under the bed. "Moooom!!!!!", he called.

J.P. vs. Tom

2010-12-06T14:42:00.004+01:00

J.P was now staying at Tom’s flat for 3 and a half weeks. He liked Tom’s couch, he liked the atmosphere of his apartment (messy like his old place) and he liked the fact that Tom was away a lot.

In fact, Tom was always doing something. J.P. assumed he only understood 12% of the activities Tom frequently did. For sure most of them were evolved around politics, some kind of quite serious politics, not the main stream kind.

Tom was so much involved with idealistic deeds, that even watching television became a proper activity, in the sense that Tom enjoyed shouting back at politicians on screen that he disagreed with.

If watching television indeed can be called an activity, it was the only one that J.P. and Tom shared. When J.P. turned on the TV, he liked to switch to the Friday Night Quiz, or Animal Planet to watch cuddly bears and funny insects. A David Attenborough could calmly describe the orientation-instinct of ants for hours, and it would all be good for J.P.

It was this kind of situation when J.P. heard the door opening, followed by a big slam to close it again. Tom never says hi, J.P. thought. That’s OK, he figured, he probably has more essential things on his mind than greeting housemates. What is the point of saying hi every day to the same person? And besides, it would only distract him from the wildlife documentary. But at the same time J.P. realised he had just been distracted right now.

J.P. concentrated on Tom’s noises, while still staring at the TV screen. He heard some uncontrolled clattering in the kitchen, and then Tom sat down next to J.P, who did not move his head and eyes a single bit. He tried to analyse Tom’s behaviour just by the sounds he made.

“What’s on the news?” Tom asked.
- “Dunno, haven’t checked. But look, these racoons are funny little animals!”
“Yeah, and you know how they have less and less space to live? Human idiots are destroying the riverside, building houses and resorts, and where do these racoons go! Can’t believe they don’t mention these kinds of things on a programme like this.”
- “Well”, J.P. argued, “it is really about showing how these racoons live, you know. I mean, they seem to be doing pretty well there. It mustn’t be that bad for them.”

J.P. finally looked to his right side to see Tom, but he had just stood up already, and was putting on his coat. “Gotta go to a committee meeting of the Group”, he announced.

What could be so important that Tom had to leave in the cold up to some meeting on a Friday night, J.P wondered. Maybe he should have more interest in Tom’s activities. He might be a really genius guy, this Tom, maybe something like a future leader, or a spokesperson, or something.

So J.P asked: “Is it important?”
- “Of course it is important! If preventing the government from constructing a new nuclear power plant isn’t important I don’t know what is! It is unbelievable how these conservative idiots are trying to destroy the country. And the saddest thing is, people in my very own party are giving up as well. So if I don’t go, well, they’ll just do nothing!”

J.P. suddenly remembered how is ex-girlfriend Marie had once told him that she found it attractive if people thought they made a difference. She also had told J.P that this was not the case for him. It was just before they had broken up. Well, she had broken up with him.

J.P. pondered. He could actually say he admired Tom for trying to make a difference. And maybe, he thought, it might also make little difference if he joined for once. Now that would be something!

So J.P. tried: “Tom, this actually sounds pretty important, if you say so. Could I, er, like, come along?”

- “You’ll regret if you don’t! It’s never too late to develop a conscience!”

Yeah, it is never too late, J.P. thought. Good attitude.

They went to the meeting. It was at somebody’s apartment, in the attic. All 13 people smoked, and interrupted each other all the time.

My, this Tom has a high concentration level, J.P. thought. And the terminologies and issues he knows about! Tom always disagreed with fellow group members, J.P. analysed. He probably knew better than the others, it could well be. Although the others had arguments that seemed plausible to him, too.

J.P quite enjoyed following the conversation. It was a bit like watching a discussion on television in a foreign language. But then suddenly they had all become silent. J.P. realised, they were all looking at him. It was because Tom had asked him a question, but J.P. had not understood it.

“So what do you think, J.P? You’ve been silent for quite a while now” Tom confronted him. How could Tom just ask him like that? He knew that this was the first time J.P tried to develop an interest against nuclear power plants - how could he expect a clear answer from him? What’s the point of this all this debate, when finally you aren’t nice to each other?

Later, when J.P. and Tom walked home together, J.P. decided it might be a good idea to start looking for his own apartment.

My birth

2010-07-02T11:09:00.007+02:00

My birth. Well, it was a total mess. There were my useless parents, at the age of nineteen, hippies for God sake, could it be more pathetic then that? They did not know anything about life, responsibility, children, they just wanted to sleep around and forget about the consequences. Well, here is the consequence, hahaha! I mean myself, you know, that I am the consequence of all that flower power crap. So then my mother got pregnant, and I’m sure they wanted an abortion, because they were of that kind, but they were too lazy to figure out how to do it or they didn’t have the money and by the time they begged enough money from their friends it was too late. And a few months later there they were, in the hospital, my useless father waiting in the hospital’s hallway for my useless mother to stop screaming.

As he often said to me,

‘Little did I know that he real trouble would only start when she stopped and you started screaming.’

And inside the maternity ward, there was my mother, who knew nothing about childbirth. She didn’t attend one course, she didn’t read one book about it, she didn’t even ask her own mother about women’s duties. So there she was, lying on the white bed like dead meat, surrounded by hospital waste: the nurses.

Useless women shouting useless words to each other, yap-yap-yap, and no one did anything practical to make me born. It was a total chaos, until the doctor arrived. The doctor knew what he was doing but he didn’t get along well with my mother, as my mother couldn’t take people bossing her around, she had to know everything better. She told him to back off so the doctor pushed her belly which made her shat all over the place, so you can imagine the place where I arrived as no one cared to clean the shit up.

My mother called the doctor a bully and the doctor called her a spoiled child, who she actually was. So my mother started to lecture him about authoritarian personality traits, which made the doctor angry so at the end he slapped her face.

‘Push it, for God sake!’ the doctor screamed at my mother, and my mother screamed back:

‘Jawhol, Herr Obersturmbahnführer!’

and that was the moment when the doctor left the room, telling my mum that she could do the whole circus herself from then on. So it took one hour to get the other doctor, a substitute who was probably a baker by profession, hahaha, and in this hour my father heard my mother screaming louder than ever, and she was screaming:

‘Take this thing out of me! Take it out!’ And she begged the nurses to cut her belly to end the pain.

So at the end I understood that I had to do the whole thing myself, and so I just did it. I just came out. My mother wasn’t even pushing. I solved the problem, hahaha. Really.

And then my father came in and the nurse put me on the belly of my mother, who was too self-centered to even touch me, so they gave me to my father who didn’t know what to do so he gave me back to the nurse who held me under water and at least the shit came off my skin.

My mother didn’t wake up in the next two days, and I was fed by the nurses and spent the hours alone in my white cage. After three days, my father took me and my depressed mother home, and my mother didn’t even wake up to go to the toilet so after a couple of days her parents came and took her to a sanatorium, and she only came back when I was already six months old. My father took care of me in these months My grandmother said that I stopped crying after the second month, realizing that there was no use of it. My father fed and changed me in every two hours, and after each baby session he closed the door of the baby room carefully and went back to study, and the doors were quite thick in our house if you know what I mean. He put me to the childcare when I was three months old, and of course I don’t remember how the childcare was, but I think that in the childcare at least there was some order.

Legacy

2010-05-12T18:50:00.001+02:00

(By Nick)

Helicopter blades, chopping, whirring, scything. Cold glass, morning condensation rising. Fields below, green and greener still to the horizon.

"15 minutes, sir".

Deoderant, rolling between sweaty armpits and clean white shirts. Two buttons undone. More condensation on the glass, motorway lights snaking through the fog. Houses, sports fields. More motorway lights, implacable and straighter, leading into the next grey mass.

"10 minutes, sir".

Moisturiser on the cheeks, affable smile. Cars down below, keeping pace. A schoolbus, and ambulance. Evidence of change, or the opposite, or… simply data. A dossier, town, industries, profile. Bigger, smaller, poorer, more disillusioned, aspirational, rust belt, green belt, transport hub. The need for better housing is…

"5 minutes, sir".

Faces, black ones, white ones, mostly ugly ones, hostile eyes, prying questions. A smile for the pensioners, a handshake for the local businessmen. An itinerary. school, factory, jobcentre, helicopter, 30 minutes.

"Landing in one minute".

Grey rooftops closing in. Times up, count down, the living dead, where did all the money go? Hospital waiting lists, young soldiers in body bags. Keep on message. Threat to economic stability. Supermarkets, supercasinos, banks shitting out money through horizontal arseholes in the wall. Legacy. An opening door, a tug on the sleeve, jumping to the ground and… Where the fuck am I? Ex-mining town, north-west. Helicopter blades slowing and ceasing. Silence, full of images. That won't bring my son back. Faces, young ones, old ones. Botched operations, she needed those cataracts. Earnings, savings, scroungers, money launderers.

A tug on the sleeve, a road like all the others, houses with blank facades and flags draped out of windows. More faces. It's all about trust. I mean change. Trusting that we can change. Or not. A school filling up with children, more faces and lunchboxes. How old are you? 8, 11, 75, 36. Foreclosures, waiting lists, disappointed faces. Your choices, your fault, your burden, your responsibility, your party, your government, your broken promises, your deficit, your deficiencies, your fallibility, your fatigue, your mismanagement, your interference, your recession, your choices, your fault. Your legacy.

Losing power over night

2010-05-06T22:23:00.004+02:00

-Come Wilma, it’s supper time! Would you like to eat, pumpkin?
-No, I want to draw and play and have a bath with Jo-Jo!
-Wilma, darling, we all have to eat to grow big and strong!
-I don’t want to eat
-Come on, honey, it’s getting late
-You’re stupid
-What did you call me?
-STUPID. Stupid, stupid, STUPID mommy
-That’s enough, Wilma, now come here and eat. What would you like?
-Dotted sausage sandwich
-There’s no sausage, Wilma honey. Cheese sandwich, or yoghurt?
-Dotted sausage on hard bread
-There is none
-But I want that! I want, I want, I want... Mommy, that’s what I want!
-How about a ham sandwich? That will be yummy...
-No
-Come on, Wilma, it’s almost time for bed
-No
-It’s ham sandwich or nothing!
Silence
-Here you go, honey, a nice ham sandwich with nice cucumber!
Arms-crossed-over-chest silence
-Wilma, little one, don’t you like cucumber?
Arms-over-chest-while frowning-silence
-I want to eat banana, mommy
Silence
-I want to eat banana, like you, mommy!
Big sigh-silence
-This is my banana, that is your ham sandwich
-But I want banaaaaanaaaa
-There is no banana. Now eat your sandwich
-I want bananaaaa

Abandoned-last-banana-on-the-dinner table-silence
Banana-swap-silence
Child-munching-banana-silence
Failed-discipline-silence

-It’s late, Wilma pumpkin. Shall we go to bed?
-No
-Come on, honey, tomorrow you have preschool again
-No! I don’t wanna to go to preschool
-Wilma sweetheart, you have to go to preschool
-No!
Tired-silence
-Wilma, mommy is tired. Let’s go to bed
-No!
Tired- on-the verge of desperation-silence
-Come on pumpkin, let’s go together!
-No! You’re stupid!
-What did you call me, Wilma?
-Stupid, STUPID mommy!
-That’s enough, Wilma. I’m going to bed, now you come with me or stay here all night!
-No!
-Well, I’m going. Bye, Wilma, good night!
Waiting-for-child-to-obey-silence
-No!
Mommy-losing-power-silence
-NO!

Hungry-child-alone-in-the dark silence
Child-eating-nice ham sandwich with nice cucumber-silence
Parents-snoring in the background-silence

Morning-silence
Mother-entering kitchen to make coffee-silence
Mother-finding a monster in her kitchen-silence
Teenage girl with a black leather jacket with the text DARKNESS sleeping on the kitchen table-silence
-Wilma?
Teenage girl poking out pierced tongue-silence
-Wilma, pumpkin, when did you become so big?

Mommy-pumpkin-when-did-you-become-so-stupid-silence

My Jazz Baby

2010-04-16T11:49:00.004+02:00

There she is again, gaping at the overflowing shelves of Jazz literature, like a stubborn sheep that has spent too long roaming about freely. I am muscular now, Master. Actually Master, no one is my Master because I have walked alone all summer, doing what I want, Master!

It’s ridiculous. Since I remember, she has been filling up this place with her humming bedroom-voice which if you ask me, is not exactly appropriate for a 14-year-old. Every week she drags with her another bagful of those books –James Baldwin, Gary Giddens, Andy Jones and all that Jazz. Literally. I never see her returning them, but I imagine them piling up around her – over her and under her; next to her pale and shimmering pre-teen body. She must have collected far more books on Jazz literature than pieces of clothing. Poor thing. I wonder if anyone will ever want to kiss her. Hello, red-head, would you let me pull down your stockings? Or what are they, football socks? And that out-washed jean jacket and that obviously fake purplish-red hair, like she never had a mother or a sister or even a pretend-to-be friend who enlightened her about the truth? I like the little half pony-tail, though. It perks up every day from the back of her head, as if to say hello to me personally, and then it flows down like a baby fountain. Or a bird fount, like the one Elise has put out in our front yard, to make our property more attractive and more frequented. More frequented? By birds or by her Chardonnay friends?

Oh, the pony-tail is moving; dancing salsa for me. I wonder if the Jazz girl can dance, too. I picture us in a slow wienerwaltz; sweeping across the room as synchronised as one of those broomsticks that comes alive in a Disney movie. Then a bouncy but sensual salsa, followed by the dramatic tango; her tiny plum breasts rubbing against my torso, a blood red single rose in my mouth. And then finally the Jazz, of course. Armstrong is purring about what a wonderful world it is and Rita Hayworth wants me to dream a little dream of her. Oh yes, I am dreaming baby. The room is spinning and I look up to see tiny hummingbirds singing love songs above our interlinked bodies; my nose buried in her purplish hair. Ah, it smells of youth!

The next moment she is wrapping her legs around one of mine, like a horny poodle, and rubbing her genitals against my thigh. Just a bit higher, Jazz baby, just a bit higher! She is riding me, naked in her football socks; her pony tail bouncing up and down in joy – telling me harder, faster, louder! I am her shepherd boy, her bull beyond taming. Come here little Jazz sheep, come to your bull-boy; come be my Matadoresse!

Matadoresse.

She turns around and gives me a surprising look.
-‘Did you say anything?’
No one is my Master, because I am my own Master, Master.
-‘Me?’ I look behind me, pretending to look for whoever had uttered that made-up word. ‘No, not me’... I go back to my book, turning the front page 90 degrees upwards to hide my blushing cheeks.
-‘Oh, it sounded like a Jazz term’... Disappointment; her entire body speaks of it. Then she walks right past me, five thick books in her lap; with her holiday smile and that distant look that goes through doors, people and buildings. She glances over at me and her smile dies. I don’t look up, just let her leave quietly and painlessly; intently staring into my Beast and the Blonde behind the counter. The bell tinkles distantly as the door to the bookshop closes behind her.

She will be back, I sigh; feeling relieved. She will be back for more Jazz.

Ms G.

2010-04-16T08:44:00.003+02:00

My name is Ms G. G, like giraffe. Well, no, not really G. like Giraffe because then my name would be not Ms G. but Ms Zs, like giraffe. And it’s not Ms Zs but Ms G. Like Joe. Which of course I can’t say when someone asks me to spell my name, because then they would write my name with a J and that would lead to never ending administrative troubles. So I say, G like giraffe when they ask me to spell my name.

I already have enough problems with the administration here. For example, they didn’t want to let me name my son after my great grandfather. My great grandfather was called Stalin, but before you start questioning the ideological background of my family, I have to clarify that we are facing a pure coincidence here: Stalin in my language means: a walnut with a very strong taste. And in my region the tradition is to name our sons after our great grandfathers. So when they didn’t let me name my son after my great grandfather, I asked them:

‘What shall I name him then?’

And they suggested me to call him Jan or Hans. But these names were too short for my taste, so I named him Jan Hans. Jan Hans Dosztojevszkij.

I am not in any family relations with Dosztojevszkij, the writer, I’m not even from Russia. I’m from Hungary. My surname is a chosen name. It was chosen in a bookstore. On the day after I arrived to Brussels, on the day when I met Stijn. I don’t meet Stijn anymore, he doesn’t even know about the existence of Jan Hans, his first born.

The day after I arrived here from Hungary, my heart was full of huge expectations about finding a job in Western Europe and becoming rich, making my high school classmates pee their pants when I would arrive back to our 20 years of anniversary in a limousine. But I knew that with the name Kovacs, I wouldn’t get far. Kovacs means Smith in Hungarian, and every third Hungarian is called Kovacs in my region. Although I knew that probably there wouldn’t be many Kovacses in Belgium, I still felt that with such an ordinary name, even if it’s only ordinary in my head, I would’t get far. I learned English and French from schoolbooks and read every book that was in English and French in the regional library, and I thought that the language wouldn’t be a problem, but the name would be. I was wrong. About the language. But this is another story.

So I decided that I had to change my name first if I wanted to get somewhere. But I had no idea of course what new name I should get. So I went to this bookstore that was next to the youth hostel, and that’s where I met Stijn. But this is another story, and I will tell it later, when we’ll have more time. So I was there, looking at the books and waiting for inspiration to find a proper name for my new life. The day before I was talking to the waitress in the bar where I spent my first evening in Brussels. She told me that one day she changed her name from Louise to Louisa in a cafeteria. Just like that. It seemed so simple. But I wanted a more drastic change. Kovacs Eva, that was my name when I entered the bookstore. I wanted to be someone glamorous when I got through the exit. Or at least someone with the hope of glamour.

So, there I was, looking at the books. I was wearing my long tennis socks. Nothing glamorous. Yet. I read a bit of the history of homosexuals, and got a bit excited, God knows why. Or God probably doesn’t know why, but that’s another story. I mean, it’s not even a story. It’s nothing. Why did I say this?

Oh yes, my name, my name, and my son’s name. So there I was, standing, and looking at the name of writers on books and at the name of characters in books. And then, there was this guy, I tell you it was Stijn but of course by then I didn’t know who he was, although a minute later I knew his name was Stijn, because he told me, so if you wait patiently fot a minute we will get there with the story. Although you already know that his name was Stijn, because I mentioned it several times, so you won’t be surprised. Which is a pity because one of the secrets of good story telling is to make the listener surprised and keep him excited, isn’t it? Are you excited? Yes you are, but I mean excited not because we lay naked next to each other, but to hear the rest of the story?

Are you sleeping? Haha. You said that you wanted to pay me to talk to you and not for the sex, and then you fall asleep? Then you get nothing for your money. That’s silly.

So, there I was, standing in front of the books. And there was that man, that tall, handsome, Belgian man, whose name I did not know, but he smelled very good.

And then he said: Are you looking for something in particular or something in general?

And I said: Something very particular. I look for a new name for myself,

But he didn’t understand what I was saying because of my accent.

So I said it again phonetically and then he understood and laughed and suggested the name: Borat, which I found funny, because I saw the movie and I understood that he was making a joke of my accent.

‘Do you have any suggestions? I asked him phonetically,

And he took a book from the bookshelf and gave to me:

‘How about this?’

‘Fjodor Mihajlovics?’ I asked him.

‘No, let’s skip the first names. The surname I mean, Dosztojevszkij.

And because by the time he said this I was already in love, for I don’t need much to fall in love, I said:

‘Splendid’, with a British accent that didn’t work out very well. ‘And how about my first name?’

‘Gina’, he said. ‘Gina Dosztojevszkij.’

‘Why Gina?’

‘Because you remind me of Gina Lollobrigida,’ he said.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Stijn.You know, like Stijn King. The writer.’

You’re laughing now, and I know why. I exactly know that I don’t look like Gina Lollobrigida. If you have to choose a famous person that I resemble, then I rather look like Robespierre under the guillotine. And when he said that I remind him of the pretty actress, I knew that he wanted sex so desperately that he didn’t even mind to take the first little creature that came along. Even if it was me, Ms Robespierre under the guillotine.

Gina. Gina Dosztojevszkij.

So. We had sex and it was good and I was happy on my second day in Brussels. I had a new name and a new lover: Stijn. He was a lover, even if only for one night, cause why would the length of time spent together define a lover? I think that a person who you loved even for a minute was your lover. You are my lover, because I loved you for a second when you asked me how much I cost for one night with that bad child smile on your face.

Of course I never met Stijn again, which wasn’t too surprising but it still hurt like hell. It did hurt because he was my lover, and losing even a minute lover hurts like losing the love of your life, even if it only hurts like that for a minute, and not for the rest of your life.

And that’s why Jan Hans’ name is Jan Hans Dosztojevszkij. But I still call him Stalin at home. Do you want to meet him once? Are you sleeping?

Technologic boredom

2010-03-17T11:34:00.001+01:00

« It’s not so bad at the end », I said.

The new law just entered into force. “Mobile phones are going to be locked into one single SIM card”. No more free sex with multiple networks. We have to choose one and that’s all. For life. Like those stupid humans who, thousands of years ago, pretended to accept the unacceptable: sleeping with one single woman or man, for their entire life. That is why infidelity turned out to be the most popular disease and killed them all because nobody was able to find a cure. Of course nobody was able to find a cure. Nobody wanted to find a cure, it would have been illogical! Would you find a cure to a disease that actually takes you away from boredom? From doing the same things with the same person everyday? For the rest of your life? No you would not.

The teenaged phone beside me kept on speaking for 01:03:57. I know it because I had set the stopwatch. I wanted to start playing “galaxy balls” but then I realized I had removed it from the applications folder three days before. I wanted to make a call, but then I realized I had lost my SIM card two days before and it hadn’t been replaced yet. I wanted to send an MMS, but then I realized I had lost my SIM card two days before and so, according to the law I had been thrown in a dark drawer; therefore there was nothing to take a picture of, apart from the blackness around. Then I thought: ok, I will send it anyway, but then I realized I had no number to send it to. When it comes to blackness, numbers disappear: black pictures are too sad, they say. So I didn’t do any of the things I had thought of doing and I set the stopwatch instead, trying to remember all the networks I had met in my life. But that only lasted few seconds because, as a matter of fact, I had only met one network and two SM cards. One day I lost SIM card number one. I wanted to show her the outside world, so I let her out and died for sometime. When I finally came back to life I realized she was a different one. SIM card number two. Looking exactly the same, but different. She was a clone. I did not question the reason why my original SIM card never came back to me. Infidelity? Kidnapping? Death? Immaterial to me. She was gone. Forever. Exploring multiple networks had probably become her new reality. Was it funny? Was it less boring? What was the sense in that, by the way? Funny how, in the exact moment she ran away from boredom, I ran into it. The new law just entered into force. Where will she go? Circumstances will force her to accept the assigned network and phone. Was it amusing now? Two days ago I lost the SIM card number two and now I am dead once more. I look around. I switch off the stopwatch and take a picture of the blackness.

Lydia and a water closet

2010-03-16T10:16:00.003+01:00

Something I wrote to keep my fingers and my imagination busy

-------------

Lydia is my neighbour. Sometimes I go downstairs to ask her for a bit of sugar because for some reason I keep forgetting to buy some at the small supermarket round the corner. I enter the place thinking "buy sugar, buy sugar", but then the colours and the smells and my hunger distract me from that and I only remember when I'm watching TV in my bath robe.

She always welcomes me with a blush and a flicker of her eyelashes, which I find cute.

Yesterday it was her who came up to ask me for a bottle opener. She was wearing a black dress, makeup and high heels. It made me jealous of something, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. I gave it to her and we smalltalked for a split second. The weather is nice. Yes, it was warm today finally. That is a nice dress. Thank you very much, I gotta go.

I went back to my sofa and threw the remote to the wall.

Every monday, wednesday and friday, at exactly four o-clock p.m., the sound of a violin comes through the ventilation hole in my WC. Last week I installed a small table in there, and now I sit on the toilet and read a book and have a coffee while listening to it. I find my WC a little bit depressing, so I went to the supermarket this morning and bought three cans of paint (green, white and blue) and forgot to buy sugar.

Going to the toilet now is like going to the toilet when camping in Ireland.

Lydia likes it, I showed it to her when she came to return the bottle opener. How do you like my WC? It's very nice, it was a good idea. Thank you. You're welcome. How was dinner last night? Very well, I had fun. I'm glad to hear that. I have to go. Have a nice day. You too.

I'm still jealous, but the blush and the flicker were there.

I have no sugar and it's monday. And it's five to four p.m. I decide to go ask Lydia for some to put in my coffee, so I change into not-a-bath-robe and go downstairs. If I'm quick, I won't miss the violin. I knock on her door and she takes ages to answer. I check my watch, it's two to four p.m. Lydia opens the door and she's holding a violin and a bow. I gape at her. She blushes. Instead of asking for sugar, I ask her out. She says yes.

I am sitting on my toilet drinking a coffee with no sugar listening to a violin through the ventilation hole in the WC.

Event

2010-03-07T18:33:00.006+01:00

THE DAY BEFORE THE EVENT

"Hey, did you here about the eh.."

- "Yeah, it sounded pretty good. Are you going there?"

"Not sure. It depends on who else is going there. Will you be going?"

- "Of course I'll be going! Everyone is going. You should come, too!"

This must have been event invitation #976 in his life. The first one was when his best friend turned three years old and threw a party in his parents' garden. Event invitations kept following throughout his life. The problem was that once he had attended an event, he could never remember them later on. Perhaps the day after, he would remember the conversations he had with a certain person, but he would already have forgotten the name. Maybe he remembered he had been dancing to some music, but he would never be able to tell which song because he'd be too focused on his own dancing moves.

"Yeah, not sure if I'll be going though" he replied.

- "Why not?"

"Dunno, man. If everyone is going I don't really see the point."

- "But you just said you wanted it to depend on who else is going?"

"Yeah, because, you know. When everyone is going to be there, it will be, you know, a bit..."

Of course he had no idea what he was talking about. He did not have a reason to go, neither did he have a reason to go.

The strange thing was, though, that the more he talked this kind of nonsense, the more the people around him perceived him as interesting. So when he ended the conversation with "Nah, well, maybe I'll let you know later then", he was certain that his conversation partner would become intrigued by him so another invitation would follow.

THE DAY AFTER THE EVENT

- "Hey, did you enjoy yourself yesterday?" he was asked

"Yeah, what about you?"

- "Yeah man, it was great! I mean, everyone was there!"

"Yeah I guess that's why you must have missed me then."

- "Oh sorry dude. Too many people, too many drinks. But why don't you come along to the thing that's going on next Friday?"

At this point he realised that this was invitation #977. Only three more to go until he could not take this any longer. He gave an intense look as his conversation partner and yelled in his face: "No!"

Writing exercise: Boredom

2010-03-06T03:43:00.000+01:00

It's 06:37.
Again.

The empty space surrounding the spaceshift is as black as yesterday.
It's been 1 year, 3 months and 23 days since I left Thauria, the planet where I'm from and to where I had returned only 2 years, 9 months and 11 days prior to my departure.
I asked for a crew, but the Interplanetary Travelling and Goods Carrying Company - the company I work for - said that we are in a recession and they had had to cut costs by flying less people and to improve benefit flying more cargo. It never fails to amaze me how, according to the ITGCC, we are always in recession.
Just to pass the time I go check the goods I'm carrying this time and I get a feeling of déjà-vu. I think I did the same thing last week, but it can be as well last year, as there is no way of differenciating the days when flying in space.

Nails.
Canned food. This time is some kind of meat and casserole.
Men's left boots.
Coffee jars.
Teddy bears.

I don't know how many times I've transported the same cargo.

The on-board computer, a state-of-the-art Pilot-Spaceship-Relations-Manager 200X-D, informs me that there will be no hot water in the next 2 days, 13 hours and 41 minutes because of a mechanical failure in the water-heater device.
I get my toolbox and go check, after all, it will be 5 months and 15 days before we approximate the next Interplanetary Space Station and in this region of space you can only receive 33 TV channels.
Kate informs me that the estimate of my repairing the water-heater device will take 2 hours and 53 minutes and that it will reduce the damage in about -1 day and 4 hours. I stop to think and come to the conclusion that extending the period of non-hot-waterness to almost 3 days and 18 hours is compensated by the almost 3 hours that I would spend trying to repair it. Kate is how I call the Pilot-Spaceship-Relations-Manager 200X-D.

By the time I'm finished with the water-heater device, Kate has received a Very Important Message.
I press the read button and the blinking red light goes off. Kate starts reciting the message.

International Space Station 487AF to Spaceship Pilot 09356837-16

John, we are sorry to inform you that we have suffered heavy damage in our Arrivals Deck.
Therefore, your Spaceship will not be able to stop here. I repeat. Will NOT be able to stop.
We are currently under attack by the Origan Rebel Forces.
We recommend a detour to the International Space Station 488AF.

We are sorry for the inconveniences.
Have a nice day.

I ask Kate to make a report about how long would it take that detour.

8 months, 9 days and 17 hours.

I ask Kate to make a report about the weapons that the ship is equipped with.

1 Big Laser Gun.
4 Small Laser Rapid Fire Turrets.
3 Grappling Hooks.
2385 Kitchen Knifes. Cargo.
9 Ship-to-Ship Missile Launchers.
8 Missiles.

I ask Kate to make a report about the attacking forces in the International Space Station 487AF.

1 Space Freighter.
3 Fighter-Carriers.
Estimate of 735 fighters.
Estimate of 18.344 soldiers.

I decide that trying to repel the attack to the International Space Station 487AF - chances of survival: 3.4% - is better than to take an 8 months detour.
I give Kate the order to remain in the current course and to load the weapons.

I feel a new sensation. Kate informs me that it is Excitement.

F5

2010-03-05T14:52:00.005+01:00

Writing exercise: write about a boredom

Tick. Tick. Tick. Marie was pressing the F5 key. Refresh. Tick. Refresh. Tick. All in all she was refreshing three webpages at once: her work email, private email, and her facebook page. Three more hours and she could go home, having done absolutely nothing. Marie took her glasses off and cleaned them with her shirt. The glasses were not dirty, and after she cleaned them, they were not cleaner. A glance through the window: a view on the parking exit of the neighbouring office. The cars always went out with the same schedule. It was 14h30. The woman with the pink car must have finished her shift. At 14h35, her car would be out. The car with the creepy stickers would oddly follow her at 14h40. Tick. F5, Refresh. Ted has updated his facebook status. "Please copy and paste this in your status if you know someone who has hearing problems. I know people who have hearing problems and I hope that one day, we will find a cure. 93% of my contacts will not copy this." Ted was the third person to make this status change in the last two hours. Marie had already updated her profile today, "had a panini for lunch". What the hell, she would update it twice. A glance through the window. 14h35! The pink car got out of the parking lot and resolutedly turned right. Copy, paste, and comment to Ted. "See? I copied and pasted it - who's not in your 93% now?" Another glance through the window. The car with the creepy stickers got out, a bit earlier than usual. He seemed to hesitate, before turning left. Why did he hesitate? He always turned left. F5. Marie sighted. 2h50 minutes before the end of work.

Morning Coffee

2010-02-05T10:30:00.002+01:00

Writing exercise on the theme, "what does a morning taste like?"

It is good to have breakfast. Good for your health, I mean. Your body slowly digests the slow sugars and slowly processes it into energy. So you won't be slow when it comes to important things, like work. There's even been an EU campaign on that, on how good it is to have breakfast. Breakfast is important.

And yet Marc never has breakfast, even though he works with the EU and sometimes even does important things. It doesn't matter to him whether he's a bit slow in the morning. Everyday, I say I'd like him to get breakfast, and he always says no, I'm not hungry, or I'm not into the habit of eating in the morning. Everyday I tell him about this slow energy release process and he laufhs, because he says he's making coffee so he's ok.

But I'm not ok. He's got a terrible morning breath. So I ask him to at least brush his teeth and he says there's no need, he hasn't eaten anything, and after that he drinks his coffee and his breath smells even worse. Then he says he' late an kisses me goodbye, and in the end all I am left with is the taste of his bad breath and morning coffee. People really should eat breakfast... Breakfast is important.

The Little Man

2010-02-04T22:00:00.000+01:00

The little man looked at me with curiosity. His look over his glasses made me want to punch him in the face. I coughed to cover up my embarrasment for having those thoughts and then he asked me:
'Are you going to pay in cash or with a credit card?'
It wasn't his tone, it was the slowliness with which he said it that made me ponder the benefits of spending twenty years in jail.
'Bancontact' - I replied - 'please'.
As I was walking towards the platform I heard shouts and a single gunshot that echoed through the station.
Someone had tried to rob at the little man's desk and had ended up shooting him.
Smiling, I got on the train and never came back.

- Megadarde -

A perfect day for promotion

2010-01-30T22:49:00.005+01:00

(In memoriam of the great literary legend J.D. Salinger who died at 91 on 29 January 2010)

-‘Milk?’ the vendor with one arm asked.
-‘I take it black’, Edina replied with confidence. ‘Like the deep blue sea’.
-‘No sugar?’ the man enquired, hiding a hopeful smile. He was obviously hitting on her.
-‘Maybe’, she said and turned away to inspect the bananas. Someone had written “NASTY COMPANY” in capital letters on the Chiquita box.

The bananas were not yellow enough to be eaten on the spot, but not green enough to be saved for later. Besides, it was past 11 o’clock, anyway, so she had to rule them out. She had an appointment with the hairdresser (the one with sexy dreadlocks, next to Metro Madou) after work and did not want to suffer from stomach cramps while getting her head shaved.

Today is the day, Edina thought. There was a distant smell of fish in the cafeteria.
-‘Well, how many?’ The one-armed man’s smile stretched from ear to ear, as he proudly held onto her cup. You are like the laughing cow cheese, she thought.
-‘Four’, she said, looking straight into his peanut eyes. ‘Today I need it’.
-‘Yes?’ he replied, inviting her to continue the pleasant conversation. Edina took her coffee with a nod, walked towards the cashier and poured several small coins into the swollen palm of a lemon-faced lady. From the corner of her eye, she saw the man waving his one arm while smiling like a knife. Poor man, she thought, and wondered if he had learnt to masturbate with his left hand. Then she walked off, to locate a seat in the buzzing cafeteria.

There was only one seat available, next to the emergency exit.
Good, she thought. In case he really is as grumpy as they say.

Edina sat down and started producing gurgling sounds, deep down her throat in order to chase away the two other people occupying her table.
-‘Grr’, she said, sounding a bit like you would imagine a pigeon on heat.
The couple looked up from their UN resolution and exchanged a look of surprise. The smell of fish was stronger at this side of the cafeteria. Edina looked at her watch that said 15:33. He was four minutes late. Arrogant bastard, she thought and then she made another ‘grr’ sound – this time in a more opposing manner. The young woman in a pinstriped pant suit looked up at Edina, and then over at her bald colleague.
-‘I have to get back’, the pant suit told her resolution-friend.

They left just in time. Edina closed her eyes and started doing breathing exercises, practising her lines silently.

You are the guiding star of the group. A lighthouse; a rock; a hero! We admire you, man – you; your Glass family; your dialogues, and most of all, your bananafish.

-‘Your must be Edina’, someone said, sharp as an alarm clock.
-‘It’s me’ Edina said and opened her eyes slowly.

There he was, alive and kicking, in a yellow poncho and rain hat. More than three fifths of his face was covered with hair; one long eyebrow connecting with sideburns connecting with moustache and beard. She wondered whether the non-trimmed beard connected with his chest-hair while naked.
-‘I’ve heard about you and your guys’, J.D. Salinger whispered, looking around nervously while pronouncing the last word.
-‘Yes’ she replied, inviting him to sit down. ‘We are the guys’.
-‘Who wrote The Conspiracy’ J.D. Salinger filled in. Water was dripping down his triangular shaped hat. It made Edina think of a simple song from childhood: My hat, it has three corners. Three corners, that’s my hat. And if it lacks three corners, then it is not my hat. She never thought hats could have three corners outside the world of nursery rhymes.
-‘Yes’ Edina said, ‘that’s us!’ She tried hard to hold back a laughter boiling from deep down her stomach. One of those laughs that can make rooms tremble; that warm up frozen hearts of cynical grandfathers. Today is the day, she thought.
-‘Let’s talk about it’, J.D. Salinger said with a nothing-like-a-cow smile. ‘I have an idea’.

Resistance is futile

2010-01-27T20:49:00.006+01:00

“Walk, keep walking, don’t look back.” I kept repeating that sentence to myself as I made my way down rue Franklin, headed for the Schuman metro station where I was sure I could loose them in the crowd.

There, right in front of me, disguised as a STIB controller was one of them. I wouldn't fall for that old trick; I about to show him that I hadn't wasted my time playing Rugby when I was younger. Fast walking, no, running toward him, ready for battle, I allowed myself to see how it all had started.

Little bastards, thinking they were smarter than me, thinking I wouldn’t notice the signs. Everything began when I came home, right after I had taken it. I knew it was a huge risk to take, so I was very cautious, I looked in the rear view mirror every now and then, checking if the cars behind were behaving the way cars ought to do. I even burned two or three traffic lights, James Bond style.

I was beginning to doubt my sanity when I got home, but there it was, the first signs that they were onto me. The parking spot right in front of my apartment was free. Ha! Ha! That parking spot’s never free. So, I did what any sane person would do and went to park three blocks away and came back on foot, taking big detours. They probably thought I would park there like an unsuspecting idiot so they could plant a bomb under the car and as soon as I started the engine in the morning: BOUM!

Anyways, it’s when I got home that I realised that those after me were no amateurs. Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing was out of place. Everything was where I had left it.

“Oh”, I thought to myself, “they’re good!” Incredible, it was simply amazing how meticulous they had been. Everything they had moved while searching, they had put it exactly as it was, even the frame holding Uncle Nick’s picture, which I had tilted on purpose was still at an angle.

I rushed to the sleeping room without turning any lights on, because A, they probably were bobby trapped and B, even if they weren’t, I was certain that there was a vehicle opposite the street, probably a van full of men armed to the teeth waiting for a sign of my presence to “take care of me”, if you catch my drift.

Ho! Ho, they really had sent the elite after me. The bed was as well made as in the morning when I had left. Well, that is if you omit the C4 under the bed and the motion detectors to trigger it as soon as I sat a foot in the room.

Well, I was about to prove to them that I was no amateur myself. I slept in on the hard bathroom floor that night.

Uncomfortable? Yes! But I woke up alive.

Kill your darlings

2010-01-26T20:22:00.000+01:00

‘Since I turned sixty, I’m not afraid anymore. For what should I be afraid of? What is still there that is worth the dread of loosing it? I learned to live in peace with all that needs to leave or perish or die out. And now I’m afraid again. But I’m not afraid for myself. I’m afraid for someone I am responsible for. Not for the waiter, not for the fat family, and not for the lady with the head like a bullet... there, in the corner with the saddest child..’
He points at the woman whose head resembles a bullet, and sips from his coffee.
‘But I’m afraid for you.’
The girl doesn’t know what to say. She sets her t-shirt right, regretting that she put on such a deeply cloven top this morning. Is he blackmailing her? She agreed on having coffee with him because it would not have been strategic to say no to her creative writing professor after she sent him to hell and far beyond, drunk at the party of the literature department, when he invited her to his flat to discuss her grade.
‘What are you afraid of?’ she asks, staring at the fat family at the neighboring table: the father just refused to offer ice cream and sympathy for his only child who is now making up his mind to have another nervous breakdown – the third today and it’s only three in the afternoon. For he is young, he doesn’t mind: he still has plenty of nerves to break down. The mother is good, non-judgmental; too busy with her heavy breathing.
The professor raises his eyebrows, he is not here to share the attention of the girl with some side characters and the fat father takes a fifty euros note out of his wallet, leaves it on the table and walks away abruptly. His folks follow him with marble eyes and no discussion. Thirty euros tip is enormous but so is the family, the waiter thinks and smiles goodbye.
‘As you might know, having read all my books and attended my seminars, that I’m not one of those idiots who talks about conspiracy theories, like the Tel Aviv, London, New York plot or the nine eleven folklore. What I’m talking about is true, relevant and terrifying. And above all, it can be proven. When could you really relax for the last time?’
‘I don’t remember,’ the girl says and sets her T-shirt even righter.
She sits right and talks the truth: she doesn’t remember. There is always something to worry about. She dries her sweaty palms on her jeans and looks around, hoping for the waiter. But there is no movement in the whole venue whatsoever, and the place looks smaller than before. Where is the bullet lady with the sad infant? And the old Moroccan guy and the deaf toy speculator? She didn’t see them leaving.
‘You might think that this nervousness is in your nature’, the professor continues. ‘But what if someone is keeping you insecure? You are about to graduate, you look at the job sites and there are hardly any ads apart from non-paid internships. You think that there are no jobs on the market. But what if there are no ads because someone is hiding them from you?’
The girl is sitting hunched up, staring at her thumb that is drawing circles on the napkin. A bystander couldn’t tell if she is listening or not, but the professor knows that she is listening. He must be right, for who could know it better?
‘What if someone wants you to feel anxious and uses all the tools he has to keep you feel insecure? And what if he has all the possible tools? You believe that the financial crisis is actually happening. But what if someone invented it to make you feel more worried? What if the economy is going very well? What if the environment never felt better? You take the climate change for granted, and the elections in Iran...
‘What about the elections in Iran?’
‘It’s not true.’ The professor whispers. ‘It didn’t happen.’
‘What didn’t happen?’
‘Iran didn’t happen.’
The girl shakes her head and makes a numb attempt to laugh. The professor looks around and sees exactly that he wants to see: no one. He is still whispering, for the effect rather than for any reasonable reason.
‘And do you remember that last month your boyfriend broke up with you after a fight over biscuits and blowjobs?’
‘Of course I remember.’ The girl rubs her forehead. ‘But how the hell do you know about it? Did someone from the class...?'
‘It didn’t happen.’
‘What didn’t happen?’
‘You didn’t break up, because you had no one to break up with. You haven’t had a relationship for years. There was no boyfriend.’
‘God. You are crazy.’
‘Are we becoming personal here, is that what’s happening? Do you think I am crazy? What if you are crazy? Do you want to go crazy?’
‘Leave me alone. Please. Just leave me alone.’
The girl tries to stand up but the professor grabs her wrist.
‘Last Saturday. You were rather impolite if I may say.'
‘You know what, you miserable, horny old fuck?’ the girl’s eyes widen and her voice is now high pitched. It sounds like a sheep in labor, the professor notes down as the girl goes on ‘You go and fuck yourself and leave me alone...’
The voice dies out.
'You look pale.' The professor says gently. 'Do you feel rather unstable lately?'
The girl shakes her head almost invisibly.
'Let me go.'
'Do you feel sometimes that it would be nice to fall asleep and not wake up?'
'Cut the crap, please..' Her voice is begging.
'I will cut the crap, dear.' The professor nods. 'It's time to cut the crap. I tell you the truth why I'm here.'
The girl looks up, and there is a hint of hope in the red eyes: was this scene just some crazy writing experiment? And the professor says:
'I'm the messiah, sent to you by the God of writing.' He chuckles and winks and then he stays silent for a second. The girl is speechless for what could be said to such nonsense?
'And I was sent here to tell you that you will never be a writer. You will never be a writer because you don't even have a story yourself. Once I thought you were worth a story, once I had big plans with you – but you made me change my mind. You didn't live up to my expectations. You disappointed me. I was fooled by my instinct: you are not worth mentioning. You are expelled, dear.'
The professor lets go of her wrist and the girl doesn’t try to stand up.
‘What a sorrowful end after such a promising beginning.’ The professor finishes the last sentence, pays for his coffee and leaves the girl with eyes wide open in the cafe, frozen for eternity in such a nasty surprise.

A conspiracy theory?

2010-01-24T13:11:00.003+01:00

Everyone is talking about my new boss. They say she is not quite what she makes herself out to be. She is not corrupt or anything; no unpaid TV licenses or undeclared ownership of multinational companies. She is not licking God’s arse to be liked; she is not smiling to convince her team to work for her. She is not stupid. It’s just I think she is a man.

The first day I met her, she was wearing a dark green combat suit. I said hello and then I did not find anything else to say but “oh, that is a combat suit”. She said “yes”, quite militantly and without a smile. I wanted to ask her how her weekend was, but the combat suit killed it for me. Her thin Scandinavian hair looked even shorter than on the images I had seen of her on Google. Why do middle-aged women cut their hair short? Is it because it stops growing; or because they want to distinguish themselves from youth; from young pretty girls?

I am not the only one to believe that Mrs C is actually Mr H. My colleague in the legal service told me she’d heard it was a way for Mrs C to slip in, unnoticed, into the unfilled female quota of the College. I know it’s true that God from the 13^th floor addressed the leaders of our continent with the following words: “Dear men and leaders of our continent, this year it is women or nothing. Give me women, and in return I will offer you the reign over our farms, fish and tractors; our crisis, crowns and wastelands.

Blackmailing? I guess you could call it such. But the thing is, it really seemed to have worked. Suddenly everyone and their dog in the governments of our continent wanted to be a woman. Women with fake breasts or nasty surprises in the crotch region after sharing the lift with a long-legged blonde stagiaire. Or real female flesh and blood; flabby middle-aged lady flesh. God didn’t care about which – as long as you could label yourself woman.

Against this, it may seem like showing up in a combat suit is sort of taking unnecessary risks. You know, suspicions confirmed; masculinity declared.

But “Mrs C” is smarter than that. I have only known her for five days but I already know she only does things for a reason. My secretary thinks she is using inverse psychology, you know like telling everyone I’m so much like a man that you would never guess I’m really a man. Some might wonder whether a combat suit is appropriate when you will work on immigration issues. I don’t know, maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe there is nothing fishy in Mrs C’s pants. Maybe this is all a big conspiracy theory created by those rumour-spreading media bastards. They have nothing to write about, and so – POOF – they create a transvestite amongst the future rulers of our continent.

Conspiracy Theory 21/01/2010 [Quique]

2010-01-22T02:31:00.001+01:00

My writing-on-the-spot exercise came out like this:

-------------------

'You know how the European Commission is just an institution created by different governments to centralize control on the population?' - said the foul-smelling guy that was sitting next to me at Café Central.
'Hm-hmm' - I said, not paying him much attention. I had other things in my mind, like how I fucked up that mind-control experiment last week.
I took a sip from my now cold coffee and went over the events in my mind one more time.
There were seven subjects in that experiment, two women and five men. No, it wasn't discrimination, it's just that the female mind is harder to control.
We lost a man the second day, because his mind was overcrowded and finally his sinaptic connections couldn't hold and his brain shut off. Just like that.
None of the others died, but both women and three of the men became idiots. No mind to control means no interest to us, so the agency made them disappear.
There was one man left and our hope laid in his shoulders. We were beginning to make things he didn't want to, the final objective of every mind-control program.
But now he has escaped.
And we don't know how.

*****

The man with the hat looked across the Grand Place. It was summer in Brussels and the square was vibrating with visitors and inhabitants from the most varied countries.
He spotted the man quite easily. He was wearing a black suit and sunglasses, the uniform from all the secret agencies all over the globe. How do they expect to remain secret if they all dress the same way? It's stupid!
He turned around to his companion and pointed to the man in black.
'It's that guy, Viktor.' - he said.
'How can you be so sure?' - Viktor replied - 'Has he been following you?'
'I can't be sure if it was him, but I've seen other suits on my way here' - the man answered.
'I saw no-one after I rescued you from the underground levels of the Berlaymont building.'
'That doesn't mean they weren't there.'
'I think you're just being paranoid.' - Viktor said, rolling his eyes upwards.
The man with no name swore under his breath. Then grabbed Viktor by the shoulders and started shouting almost soundlessly.
'How can I make you understand?! They are conducting experiments! They kept us in cells! A man died and five people became effectively brainless!'
'And how can you prove that?' - Viktor asked calmly.
'I saw it with my own eyes!' - The man was visibly excited and his voice was becoming louder.
'That's no proof' - Viktor said - 'You may be crazy.'
'AAAARH!' - shouted the man in desperation.

When the man in black was handcuffing Subject 4, Viktor had already vanished.

*****

We finally have found and recovered Subject 4. He's in a cell, but we haven't resumed the tests yet. We are trying to find out if he has talked to anyone about all this. But he refuses to talk.
I go out to the Schuman rond-point and, once in the little garden in the middle of it, I take out the recently bought disposable mobile phone.
I book the services of a professional interrogator. He should be here in about half an hour.
The sun is reflecting on the Berlaymont building, but this time it doesn't give me hope.
I'm worried.
Has he talked?
Who with?

The Devil Inside.

2010-01-11T12:41:00.003+01:00

Thirteen years have passed

And his hair is now grey.

Thirteen years in a cell

Was what he had to pay.

Murder was not easy on his mind

But the burden was not his alone:

Half was taken by the devil

That lived inside his own.

He was granted a small house

After his release back to the street.

Rehabilitation had been assumed

But the devil was back on his feet.

He fought it with all his might

As its hold on him was strong;

He gathered all his will although

He knew he couldn't resist long.

They found him in the bath

Water, blood and porcelain white

Open veins and pale his face:

The devil inside had lost the fight.

Writing exercise: our character at a family event

2009-06-25T15:41:00.001+02:00

In a previous writing exercice, we developped a character going through a quarter-of-life crisis. Mine was called Anne-Laure, 27, and worked as a consultant in Brussels. This exercice shows this character in a family gathering.

"So, Anne, what have you done this week?" her mother asked.
"Just the usual" Anne-Laure replied.
"Did you try the recipe I gave you?"
"No, but Louise did". Louise was Anne-Laure's flatmate; her mother's eyes suddenly woke up.
"Oh, wonderful! How did she managed the thing - with the stuffing - did she...?"
But Anne-Laure interrupted her mother.
"I don't know. She did something else. She only got inspired from the recipe. You know I hate mushrooms... She did something else."
"Oh really? What did she replace the mushrooms with?"
"I don't know. I didn't look."
Her mother made her famous irritated look and accompanied it with a disapproving silence. Everyone seemed hung to the words that were not spoken. Until Anne-Laure said:
"Look. I don't like cooking, ok? There is no big deal. It's not like if I could love everything. Dad doesn't like gardening. You don't like ironing."
"As if you liked ironing" Arthur said, but nobody seemed to notice. Her mother continued.
"And you, Arthur, have you cleaned your room?"
He replied, "no. Have you cleaned yours?"
Anne-Laure and Arthur exchanged a mischievious look and their mother laughed.
Proper parents would not laugh, their father thought. In fact, proper parents would scold them. But he didn't speak a word. Instead, he pretented to be absorbed by his plate: he still couldn't identify what he was eating. He didn't mind her wife to be a cordon-bleu, but did she have to make things so complicated? It took her hours to get this meal together, and he was hungry. He would have been satisfied with a sandwich.
But it didn't matter what he thought, because in the meantime his children had started a conversation about a new TV show. His wife attempted to follow, when really she didn't know a thing about it.
Yet on this latter point, he was wrong. In fact, his wife wasn't even listening to what her children were saying. She was thinking about the recipe her daughter didn't use. What was it with Anne-Laure that made her hate cooking? And what was it with herself that made her feel more connected to her daughter's flatmate than to her daughter herself?
On the other side of the table, Anne-Laure was still talking to Arthur with animation, except that the conversation had switched from a new TV show to TV shows they had discussed before. She was not really thinking about the TV shows either. She was rather thinking about the circumstances that made her watch them. She hated being alone in her flat, she truly hated it. So she watched the television. It made the time run faster. Was it how she would end up? Alone, and watching the television to distract her from the emptiness?
Perhaps she would, but Arthur didn't seem to think so.
In fact, at that precise moment, he was not thinking at all.

A Christmas scene

2009-06-25T15:39:00.000+02:00

“Susan, this is for you. Merry Christmas”. Their Mum lifted a small package, too small to attract the interest of the others, but neither Ben nor Susan were fooled. They couldn’t really miss the luxurious wrapping and the Yves Saint Laurent tag. And apparently, they were the only ones to care. Their elder brothers looked numb. They had received their gifts already – by order of age, as it always happened in their family. For the 33rd year in a row, Edward was the first to unwrap his present. Thomas followed him closely. Susan was the third, and Ben was the fourth. Ben had always been the last and the least. He had always hated Christmas, and every Christmas looked as hateful as the other.
Could it have been done otherwise? Could the presents be distributed by order of preference? None of them even imagined such a thing to be possible. It would disrupt the family’s habit to the point of chaos. Similarly, Ben’s two elder brothers couldn’t really receive things that were not in pairs. It had always been that way. When they were children...
Read the full text here.

Writing on Edina's roof

2009-05-30T12:03:00.000+02:00

If you happen to speak French...

2009-05-17T18:59:00.000+02:00

Here is the link to few stories I am writing in French - hopefully a book. It's the story of three friends going through a quarter of life crisis. Claire is struggling to come to terms with her dissertation; her boyfriend Alban has underestimated the impact of Claire moving in with him; and her best friend, Lucie, is finding out that her dream job is not what she wants to do with her life. Hopefully it ends well; all I can tell is, no one dies.
Though I could kill them all in a car crash in order to save me from the trouble of finding a proper ending...

Brussels arrival

2009-05-16T16:43:00.001+02:00

A little square, with me in the middle. None of the surrounding buildings seemed to fit together. The orange house, with its optimistic façade, cheered at me with open windows and flowers in the window-sills. Then the grey flat, sadly glancing at his neighbour. All he had to offer were the satellites of its inhabitants. But at least he was useful, people had their home in him. When I looked behind me I could see a structure of what once must have been an office, but had clearly been abandoned years ago. I could see the building’s frustration about this. Its shadow was so strong that I suddenly felt chilly.

I stood up and ran into a tall building with dark red curtains. The windows were so dusty that I would no longer be able to feel the intimidating tension of the little square. A café, it seemed. A narrow entrance hall where I could hear noises from the room next-door.

A person – was it human? – welcomed me. Where I came from, he asked. Good question, did it matter?
- Of course it matters! he roared, in Portuguese, it is the only identity you have in this city!

It was like I had to pass an exam and had just lost my crib note. Where did I come from? My lips tried hard to spell it out but my brains opposed. The person, who rather looked like a horse, stared at me so violently that I had to come up with something.

Belgian, I whispered.
- BELGIAN?! the horse neighed. WRONG! – in Hungarian this time.
How can that be wrong? I am in Brussels, which is the capital of…
- No-one is Belgian here, and you certainly aren’t!! - Was it Polish that he spoke now?
…well, then, Danish? I brought up.
The angry horse gave me a suspicious look, but said ‘fine’. I followed him into the noisy bar area.

Walking behind him I could see that his bottom – or was it his back? – was striped like a zebra. He directed me through a chaos of loudly talking entities to an empty chair, placed around a big round table. The smoke was so think that I could only define my neighbours’ silhouettes. The clouds hang just around the entities’ heads so I could only see their hands on the table, holding all kinds of glasses with strangely coloured beers. I followed their arms up to their shoulders and necks, but could I not see their heads. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, it was not possible to define the language that was spoken.

I will bring you a Duvel, the horsezebra said, and disappeared.

Before I could think of something to say to join the conversation a sheep’s nose bumped into my ear.
- New here?
Si, I said, as I thought it was speaking Spanish.
- Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.
Just when I tried to find an answer the sheep turned back from me to take sip from its beer.

Mr Tonto Tonto

2009-02-03T12:34:00.001+01:00

Create this character. Mr Tonto Tonto - 87 years old – pensioned pipe maker – He has the sharpest memory in the world, and he remembers the future.

That pipe was no usual pipe. No, indeed, child, no pipe was ever made that resembled this one. First of all, you have to know that it was pink. I made the chamber with pink ceramic, I stemmed it with pink marble and I surrounded with pink glass – yes, glass! Why not? Indeed this pipe was meant to be fragile, like happiness is. Because happiness is fragile, child, it is fragile… And this pipe was about to make his user the happiest man in the world. It was a happy pipe. That is why it was pink and surrounded with glass. I signed it with my name, T.T., because that is my name, I am Tonto Tonto.
But about this pipe. It was not so dissimilar to the one I made for your father when he got married. Except your father didn’t like pink; your mother did, but she didn’t like pipes. So I made it black, but black isn’t a good colour for happiness, that is why your father was to be less happy than the owner of the pink pipe. I still signed it T.T., because it is my name, I am Tonto Tonto, and it was still a happy pipe. And you haven’t seen your father very unhappy, have you, child? So imagine how happy the owner of the pink pipe will be.
You can only imagine, because I don’t know who will own the pink pipe yet. What do you mean? No, I haven’t sold it yet. In fact, I haven’t made it yet. Is that a problem with you, child? I will tell you what a problem with me is. You young people never want to hear about the past. All you can think about is the present. But the past, you don’t care about. Let me tell you child, that if you had cared about the past, you would have known what my pipes have done, how great a happiness they have created. They were all meant to create happiness, but people always want them made in black so it doesn’t always work.
Let me tell you this. Out of the 2431 pipes I have created, only 567 have made people unhappy. Only one of them made its owner really, really unhappy. But it doesn’t matter anymore because he is dead. He died of a heart attack right there, outside the shop, because that is where he died. Someone mugged him for the pipe. It wasn’t a happy pipe. The owner wanted it made out of two pieces of wood, one black and one almost black. He insisted, so I made it out of two pieces of wood but I told him it was not to be a happy pipe. I also knew that the pipe would break when the owner would be mugged, but I didn’t tell him that, because otherwise he wouldn’t have bought it, and that pipe would have been mine, and I didn’t want to be unhappy. Don’t look at me like that, the pipe really did make his owners unhappy. Take the mugger, for example. He tried to glue the pipe back together when he realised it was broken. Instead he glued his hand to the pipe, and he had to go to the hospital… And the hospital called the police. So that made him really unhappy. I knew it would make him unhappy. That is why I didn’t sign the pipe with my name. I signed it N.H. instead, that is for Not Happy, because the pipe was not happy.
Now, child, if you want, I might tell you more about my pipes. I have a sharp memory for pipes, the sharpest memory in the world of pipe makers. Other pipe makers do not remember all the pipes they have created, but I do, those that I sign and that I don’t sign, with my name T.T., because that is my name, I am Tonto Tonto.

Anna is gone

2009-01-30T17:10:00.000+01:00

- OH MY GOD!
All the girls looked up from the plates full of waffles and jam. The voice came from the door, previously closed, but now wide open. There stood a girl. And... it looked like... Anna. But no, that would just be impossible. Anna was gone. But this girl has great similarities to Anna, just that everything was different. Anna's hair used to we light brown and straight, a bit greasy hanging down on her shoulders, over the grey sweater with a hood and zipper she used to wear with blue jeans like verybody else.
This girls' hair wasn't greasy, it was blonde and huge, and she wasn't wearing anything like the clothes they normally wore at this school. Instead, she wore a too-big, red dress: a grown-up woman's dress, not really fitting a 14 year old. To that, she was wearing black boots, like a military, and green socks. And there was something over her left eye. A line. Looked like somebody drawn a white line across her eyebrow and forehead. Was it a scar?
She stood there in the door with her arms stretched out like she wanted to hug them all, and she repeated her message:
- OH. MY. GOD.
It was completely silent in the room. Nobody was eating, waffles fell down from the girls' hands, down on the table. Confusion. Insecurity. They started looking at each other, desperately, seeking consensus on how to react to this. Nobody wanted to the initiative. Who would dare to take the first step, pose the question?
Finally, it was Sarah, the most confident of them all, who did it. Carefully, like she was stepping on a mine-field.
- A-nn-a...? Is that... you?
Everybody stared again at the girl in the door. Nobody dared to even blink their eyes, waiting for the reaction.
And then:
A secret smile developed into a real smile from one side of her face to the other. The close her eyes and started to giggle. And...
she nodded.
They all realised at once. Screaming in high pitch they ran up to her to hug her and kiss her and soon they all were standing around Anna, begging her:
- Tell us, tell us PLEASE!!
- OK, Anna said. I will tell you...

The meaning of the Lost and Found

2009-01-27T15:12:00.000+01:00

Martha believed that everything happened for a reason. Whose plan it was, she could not tell; she usually thought “fate” or “destiny”, not daring to make a higher mention. Sometimes good things happened and sometimes it was bad; but at least she slept peacefully, knowing that someone, somewhere, had a plan for her for the next day, let alone for the rest of her life.
And most of the time she was right: someone did have a plan for her on the day after. She worked in an administration and that person was her boss.
Martha could have spent the rest of her days like this, waiting for her fate, yet a question bothered her. A small, meaningless question, which kept creeping inside her mind: was there any meaning to the things she lost? But she did not worry much, as she thought that destiny would provide her with an answer when it had planned to do so.
That was, until she lost her keys at the office. That day, she thought it was fate, and that the answer would soon be revealed. So she stayed at work to look for her keys. All evening, she searched and searched and searched, and when she eventually found her keys, she kept searching for signs of something extraordinary waiting to happen. Yet nothing happened. It was very disconcerting.
To an outsider, this could just seem like a loss of time. Yet to Martha, it was different. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps she had escaped from something terrible, something that would have happened if she did not stay in the office. She might have been part of an accident on the way home, for example. Or perhaps there wouldn’t have been an accident, but this was all part of a bigger plan, which she just couldn’t understand at that moment.
Yet perhaps it didn’t mean anything at all.
So that night she started to think about it before she went to sleep. The morning did not provide her with an answer, so on the night after, she couldn’t sleep at all. Then she couldn’t find any meaning to the fact that she was not sleeping, and it only made it worst.
Soon, she was so tired that she didn’t even look for signs anymore. Nothing was happening to her and she wondered whether she might have been wrong, or only partially wrong. Maybe some things happened for a reason, and other things didn’t mean anything. After all, the files of her destiny must have been extremely complicated to take care of, if the person who managed it had to take into account all the interconnections and interdependences of one event on the other. One week later, the question still bothered her and she couldn’t even lift her eyes from the pavement.
It was then that she noticed a sparkling thing lying next to her feet. Had it always been there? She didn’t know, but today she noticed it. Or rather, the fact that she had lost her keys then been unable to sleep embodied her with the power of finding the object. It was a set of keys which did not belong to her. Another person’s loss. Fate was sending her a message.
So she happily took the keys and went to the office, relieved to see that things did happen for a reason after all.
The fact that no one ever came to ask for the keys did not bother her.

One hundred words of solitude

2009-01-22T17:33:00.001+01:00

He was sitting with his back leaning on the entrance door.
- Don't leave. – He said.
He hugged her knees as she tried to pass by him.
- I have to go to work. – She said.
- If you leave now you will never come back.
His tears fell on her shiny shoes. He saw the future in the shaking marbles.
- Let me go. – She said.
There is always a moment when you stand up. He stood up.
She kissed his wet face and closed the door behind her.

The person in me

2009-01-22T17:32:00.001+01:00

- You treat me like this because you don't see the individual in me. You look at me, and all you see is breasts, thighs, pure flesh. If you could see me for who I am, if you could see the person in me, you would want to be my best friend. You are trapped by your animal instincts. You should try to focus on my inner values.

- Well, that's exactly what I'm doing. – The butcher said, and removed the chitterlings of the chicken with his knife.

Quickie

2009-01-22T16:25:00.000+01:00

The elevator door closes. Trapped for ten floors. Me and him. Eyes towards the ground. My elbow at his arm. Coincidentally. Focus on this point of contact. Physical. Streaks of electricity along the paths of my nerves. Up my arm. Reaching my breasts. Reaching my flesh. Muscle tension, miniature shivers. Tiny hairs erected. Holding my breath. His arm shifts away. The connection has been broken. Looking up, pupils wide. Brown eyes staring back. Unfamiliar. "Have we met before?" No, not really.

I am scared

2009-01-22T15:02:00.000+01:00

"I am scared," she said.

"Scared? Why should you be scared?"

"Well, shouldn't I be?"

"I don't know what you are talking about."

The young woman took a deep breath. "That night. The body. This… This thing..."

"Which body? Which night?"

"You were there. I remember you were there."

"You are talking nonsense."

"It is the truth! I swear! He is after us, he will kill us all…"

"Nobody is trying to kill you."

"I am scared. I am so scared." And the woman said nothing more, but decided to close her eyes, so the murderer would not recognise her.

(100 words)

Love and trust

2009-01-22T14:57:00.000+01:00

- Love is to not trust, she said, lying down, eyes closed, with him beside, looking at her.
- How?
- If you know you will be loved forever, what's the need to love someone back?
She looked sad. He found her incredibly beautiful.
- It will happen to us too.
- No! I love you always, he said, and kissed her. She opened her eyes and kissed him back. His eyes were closed now.
- Never trust someone who kisses with eyes opened, she said afterwards.
- I wasn't looking, he said surprised.
- But someday you will.

The dog

2008-10-01T17:47:00.001+02:00

An insistent noise enters the barrier of my sleep, repetitive and all too familiar. “Not again”, I mumble, as I hear paws scratching on the bedroom door. Well, not exactly scratching; ripping into pieces would be more appropriate.

I hate this dog.

When we stay in bed for too long, it panics. My husband thinks it’s because it’s been abandoned in the past. When the dog realises it is alone, it seeks for traces of us within the house, and afterwards everything is upside down. Even now, it is about to attack the heavy, expensive wooden door of our bedroom. And as usual, my beloved is asleep. He would sleep through the scratches, the whining, the barks. He used to sleep through the babies’ cries, too.

Did you know that a baby can scream as loud as a plane taking off? Well, our babies did.

But that’s not the point of my story. We have lost the silence of our Saturday morning and the animal is prone on destruction, so I decide to get up. I put my slippers on and grab my shawl from the chair. Marc grumbles slightly. I am so tempted to let the dog in right now. It would jump on the bed on Marc’s side, as thrilled as if it had won the lottery. There’s no reason why he should sleep while I can’t, after all. It is his dog. But Marc wouldn’t even mind. He would talk to the dog (“you were afraid, weren’t you, you were afraid without me”), then I would say something, and he would ask for my indulgence. “God knows which kind of treatment he has received in the past”, or something of the kind. My husband does refer to the dog as a “he”, by the way.

Continue

Texts from July II

2008-08-21T15:44:00.000+02:00

What is the reason we experience scary things?

As a small girl, on the years before I went to school, and even some time after that, it never occurred to me to be afraid of the dark. I wasn’t afraid of mice either, or bees, spiders or high places. After all, I was a child who knew about things and it was perfectly clear for me that such things couldn’t hurt you. Come to think about it, I wasn’t even afraid of nightmares. Because each time I was having a dream, I was perfectly well aware that it was just a dream.

In one of those dreams, I was walking in a gloomy forest with some other children from the kindergarten. As I saw the other children getting scared, I tried to convince them there was no reason to be scared, because it was only a dream. That was perfectly clear to me, though I don’t remember if the other children in my dream believed me. Such things seem to be hard to prove... In any case, as I then finally opened my eyes, all the other children were gone, so there was no-one left to say “I told you so”.

My real nightmares were of totally different character.

***

One of them sort of had to do with making friends. When I was five years old or so, I got acquainted with a girl from the same neighbourhood. Even before that I had spent time with some other children, but mainly to avoid any worse consequences. With Anna, we used to go swinging for hours. She was okay, although there was one thing that puzzled me. It seems she once stole one of my beautiful blue hairpins, which sort of came between us, because I never really could prove that she had taken them. Eventually I even doubted it myself, for it was after all only my word against hers. I tried to be as if nothing had happened, but after this, it never really felt the same. Still for outsiders, she could pass as a friend. This meant that making acquaintance with her was one important step on the road to perceived normality.

Once Anna and I got an idea to go selling hand-picked buckets of wild flowers to all the people living in our courtyard. The people weren’t too impressed, so it took a bit more time than expected and we wondered quite a bit away from my home. She didn’t seem to mind and I also pretended I didn’t. All the time I was trying to ignore a slight warning somewhere in the back of my mind, that my Mum wouldn’t be so happy about me being late. That I had gone beyond the home area, was also not exactly a positive thing. Maybe my Mum would never find out that part, but I couldn’t leave out of my calculations that she would.

However, for a good while, I managed to push away those thoughts to the back of my head, saying to myself that preserving good relations with my friend was an important thing in life. Up until the moment came that we had to part, and she started heading towards her place, where she would have dinner with her family.

I went to sit on a small rock on the edge of a forest near my home. I looked at my house from further away and started calmly to weigh my alternatives. I knew a family close by and they were quite nice to me, but my Mum would eventually find out I was there, and that would just make matters worse. The forest itself was too small to hide into and additionally it was only May and I didn’t have any extra clothes or food with me. Few days would be possible, but at some point I would have to come out of there. Even though it was spring and not any more so cold at night, I just had to be realistic. After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that being only five years old, I could not survive without my home in the long run.

So I had no other choice but to go behind our front door and ring the bell, no matter what would happen. I was whispering desperately: please, let not nothing bad happen to me, let it pass at least for this time. After a few seconds my Mum opened the door, and looked exactly like I thought she would. It's hard to describe her expression, though I still saw the same face twenty years later in my dreams. But to my surprise, she didn’t say anything else except “so you came late” in a strangled voice. After some seconds still, I thought it okay to sneak into my room, where I hid for the rest of the day and read one of my countless books. I knew that by next morning, the whole thing would seem much milder, and if I was as quiet as possible for a while, my Mum might not bring up the topic more than once or twice after that. Though of course I knew she would not forget.

***

One evening around the same time I was waiting in my bed in the evening for my Mum to come and say me goodnight. We had this goodnight-poem which had seven different parts, and it ended with “see pictures of the princess”. I was begging her countless times and always she told me she would come soon. Finally I lost my patience and crept behind the bathroom door, where she was doing laundry.

"Can’t you just learn to live with a simple 'good night'", she asked.

“But I can’t fall asleep if you don’t say the whole thing”, I tried to explain with tears in my voice.

After a while she did recite the whole poem through the bathroom door. Except for the last bit, the one with the princess. I started to beg desperately for the last verse. Suddenly she yelled: "This is the last time I will say more than 'good night' to you!"

Having heard that, I simply paralyzed. All the time she had been behind the door and the door had remained locked. After this I knew there was no point to fight. This door would never open again. I remember that I cried in my bed for hours before going to sleep. She was maybe still inside the bathroom or maybe elsewhere. It didn't matter, since I knew I didn’t have to do anything else except just to be, to stay in my room and not make any special effort, and she would seize to exist. I had learned long before that to anticipate the moments when I absolutely would need her, so that I could save energy to fight for her being there at those moments.

Thinking about this now, I must ask myself why I bothered to cry. After all, I could be very realistic and had a habit of acting rationally, so I must also have known she would never come no matter how long I cried. I can't be absolutely sure, but I guess somewhere very deep inside me I thought it must be enough, not to do anything but to cry. Though it took a further twenty-one years before I learned that it indeed was so. By that time, of course crying could appear in many other forms, such as philosophy, psychology, ambition and a desperate search for love.

***

When I was around ten, the nightmares moved from my home to my classroom.

I always had the same strategy. To turn as colourless as possible till the storm calmed down a bit, to act like I didn’t care, to make myself believe I didn’t hear, and to wait for the next morning to come, which would make the whole thing seem smaller. And for the next morning, and the one after that. Until different kind of worries would step along.

***

As a teenager, the nightmare was my eyes. My contact lenses were difficult to use, easy to drop and made my eyes sore, but those times, they were the only thing that guarded me from the horrors of the world. The times that I happened to drop one of them, I made some of the most desperate prayers I remember. For years I avoided looking my Mum in the eyes, so that she wouldn’t see how my eyes looked like. I knew that if she knew I was so dependent on one thing, she would force me to give it up. In her logics, being dependent on something must be bad for you.

But at that point, I didn't exactly listen to her advice for living my life. There was no way of trusting someone whose life was so empty of feelings that she didn't even notice when she was treading on those of others.

***

Some years after that, my nightmares started to become more complex. It was unpleasant for me to stay in the dark, so I would rather not do that. I hated spiders, so I chose to leave the room if I saw any. I could go to the university lessons when I wanted to, and I didn’t need to see my Mum too often. All in all, I had managed to climb the ladders of normality surprisingly well. There were a few times I sort of wondered off from my courtyard with someone, at least partly for the reasons of appearing normal. But from such journeys you eventually need to come back, and the further you go, the more difficult it is to come back.

***

During these years, it happened a couple of times that I met someone who actually seemed real. But even then, it wouldn’t take long before some small thing happened that brought the nightmare back. Again, my strategy was the same: to act like I didn’t care, to make myself believe I didn’t care, to go back to my own little room, and to wait for the next year to come. And the next, and the one after that, and the one after that.

***

Somewhere along these long long years in between – I guess the nightmares just became nightmares. In many of those dreams there was someone big and terrifying who had enormous powers, like a witch. First I always first tried to be calm my fear and calmly negotiate with her. I first succeeded, at least up to a point, but in the end I started losing my strength of will. I always woke up just in time, and in one breath went through all the prayers I knew, until I finally more or less managed to convince myself that it was only a dream.

But, in a time when I for some reason had managed to empty my life of all things that somehow resembled life, the truth was that I was fascinated by those dreams, for they were one of the few things that made me feel something.

I think that's a point which is important to remember.

***

In those times, I started to hear rumours of one of my cousins.

I had lost contact with her a long time ago, regardless of the fact that she was one of the only people who were real to me when I was a child. Those times, she had prettier hair than mine, a princess-like Swedish accent and the ability to make funny jokes, but she was always the one who was afraid of spiders, bees and the nightly silence of our grandparents' country house. But I guess at some point in our teenage years some small thing had happened which offended me, and I started to act like I didn’t care. It was easy, because she lived far away and we both had then a lot of other things to think about.

The rumours said everything was not alright with her. She had started a schooling, one after another, but then always soon quit, and locked herself inside her house. After a while, they said, she had even troubles going out of there, as every time she went outside, she would go into a panic.

I hadn’t seen her in many years, and I knew nothing about the details, but when people talked about her, I stayed quiet. Her nightmares were not foreign to me. People thought of course, that I was the one who would do well in life, and that for some strange reason, my cousin just didn’t know how. However deep down I knew there was no big difference between quitting schools and quitting people you cared for. Only difference was that the latter you could hide and pretend that you were perfectly sane and normal.

As long as nobody knew that you did care.

***

But maybe the worst nightmare of all came one day when I looked back at my life and I realised I had carefully followed the strategies of my mother. I didn’t know if I was awake or sleeping, but it didn’t matter. Thinking logically, it meant I would also be leading my future children to take the same path as me. Ironic, since the only thing I really had wanted to do in my life was to prevent that.

Of course putting all things together, in the end this was also a kind of nightmare only I knew about. Looking from the outside, my life looked totally different from my mother’s. After all, she knew nothing about philosophy, psychology, or ambition. In my opinion, not so much about love either. However, this made me puzzled.

All these years and all those nightmares, I never really expected that things could be different.

***

Until one sunny August morning when I was twenty-six, he finally came into my life.

Thinking of my past, all the stories, histories, philosophical and mystical theories of my culture I had grown a part of, everything I had learnt, all the paths I had taken which never really ended up anywhere, it never had even crossed my mind that I might one day find what I was looking for. And when I did, nothing could be more simple. He was not one bit mystical. At the moment that I decided to follow his path instead of my Mum’s, I still had no idea what he was really like, though he knew who I was. For a few weeks I was in a safe place where nothing could touch me. And it was a place where I wanted to take all my friends with me. But that was not what he wanted to give me.

In those weeks, it happened one evening when I was working at a grocery store nearby, that I got a visitor. Suddenly I just knew it was he who was there. I had to stand behind the counter so I had nowhere to hide. Each time a customer came in, my blush got deeper and I realised he saw the whole thing, he saw my embarrassment, he knew all the very human feelings I had in me, and he just stayed. I couldn’t help smiling, and the people looked happy and smiled back at me, but after a while I just couldn’t take it anymore, I murmured: “I’m sorry” and rushed to the back room.

***

Then very soon, all my nightmares started somehow coming back to me, one by one. I found the present and the past ones, and some nightmares of my friends and family too. I was overflooded with them, until I was so surrounded that I couldn’t look away any more. Then I had no other choice but to start to find my way out of the mess.

I can’t understand how, but after making acquaintance again with all the nightmares I have ever known, there have been moments that the life itself starts to fascinate me more than my dreams. And I guess somewhere deep down I know they are only nightmares.

***

So what is the reason we experience scary things? I’m still not totally sure. But for me personally, it's kind of hard to trust anyone who has never seen a nightmare.

Light

2008-08-21T15:22:00.000+02:00

Light. It’s one of the most beautiful words I know. You know what it is when you see it, but it isn’t so easy to describe it.

*****

I finished the last sentence, waited for the file to be stored in the computer, gathered together the large stacks of papers and placed them beside the shelf on the floor of my Brussels apartment. The morning sun had already lit up the room and I let my thoughts and body go numb. I closed the curtain and placed myself on the bed, making myself believe I was going to have a good night’s sleep.

I opened my eyes after an hour. My limbs and my brain were heavy. I was much more tired than hour before, which was good. It was the same morning, but it felt like I was waking up to a new day. The same sun was shining but it was slightly hotter. I went to shower without feeling refreshed, changed my clothes mechanically, closed the front door and lay my feet on the cobble stones of my home street.

The stones were warm from the July morning sun that had dried the light rain over the night. I half ran and half walked along the street, not quite sure whether I was too late or too early. I gasped a bit which I understood as a sign that I was running fast enough, even though of course my lungs didn’t work properly after not having slept more than an hour.

*****

Finally a stone was lifted from my heart. I was expecting my heart be now filled with joy over the soft deep green of the trees on the Sainte-Catherine square, by the warmth of the summer morning sunlight, with refreshing water of the fountains in the square, by the music of the birds. Let alone by the thought of my friends. Come to think of it, couldn’t remember how many weeks it had passed since I had read my emails.

In the meanwhile, the summer had come. I knew that in my country, at this point, the abundant light of the two summer months had finally managed to melt the last remains of snow from the hearts of the people, who could now easily breathe in the mature green scents of the July. Without hesitations they would walk with their bare feet on the warm grass, totally forgetting that the grass had ever been covered with frost. I knew it was July, I saw the light, I felt the sun on my skin, I heard the birds sing, but I didn’t know if I was warm or cold. I was gazing at the July light behind a window covered with frost patterns. I knew the summer was there but I couldn’t feel it. But at least I knew it was there.

*****

On these long wintery nights in July, my mind had started to wander back to one of those nights of February. Like that particular night, though one of many, when the four of us were standing under the starry February sky in the 10 degrees of frost. All four of us, feet frozen, noses bleak and mouths in constant smile, were standing in the crossroads of the always windy Eastern Long Street and the hilly Newland Street, and for the third hour we kept talking constantly, like on so many Sunday nights before. I hadn’t felt my feet in an hour, but of course I acted like I didn’t care. I saw by the smile in Joonatan’s eyes that even he started to have the same problem. We didn’t stop talking even for an instant. And like always, we were saying to ourselves we’d only chat for five minutes more, before we would all have to leave to different directions, me to West, Joonatan to South, Samuel to the East and Johannes to the North. Of course we knew we’d stand there for two hours more if nobody would bring up the prospect of having to wake up early tomorrow.

Samuel looked totally weird in his sandals but that didn’t stop him from smiling heroicly. For some reason, he really didn’t have cold in his feet. He had two large bags with him, where he carried two of his favorite editions in some strange languages, together with all the other equipment we never dared to ask about. Joonatan’s long hair was framed with frost that was made to shine by the street lamp behind him and the alternating green and red colours depending on the street lights that kept on blinking despite the late hour. And Johannes, the youngest of us, with his overwhelming joy and equally overwhelming authority. Who knows how long we would have stayed there, until Johannes finally broke the silence. “Come on guys, let’s take Joonatan to his place so he doesn’t have to walk alone!” Of course the idea was totally insane, we were tired and frozen and had to wake up early in the morning, and the journey would take almost an hour. All in all, this sounded probably the best idea anyone of us could have.

Around five in the morning, the three of us finally left Joonatan's place and walked back across the quiet frosty city. And in the meanwhile, the summer had come. I had to stop and turn around to look at all the four cardinal points, but still I was puzzled. I knew it was February, I could see the white streets and parks all around me, I could feel the frost nipping at my nose, I could hear the snow scrunching below my feet, but still I couldn’t convince myself. By the warmth in my heart, I knew it was a night in the middle of summer. Like the summers of my childhood.

*****

Two weeks ago on Sunday morning, I was at my church in Brussels, sitting a bit grumpy on a bench, streched to the extreme because of the long days of work. I felt so stressed and lonely that at that particular moment, I didn’t care to be polite to people. I felt a bit cold and the people next to me seemed so as well.

Having heard the words of the pastor I felt colder still. There he went on telling all about undeserved love and then suddenly started to make a fiery speech warning against the dangers of hardening your heart. Any other day I could have spent a moment, trying to do search my soul and analyze, whether I indeed had the right mindset. But today – it frankly didn’t even cross my mind to try.

Listening to the sermon, I felt my blood pressure rise and the feeling of indignation warming up the blood of my vains. In the end, the preacher asked softly whether somebody had felt there was something in their lives they needed to bring to the light, so they could come up to the front. But when it came to me, the softness was totally in vain. I marched determinedly to the front and stated bluntly to the preacher that I didn’t need a prayer but instead I had some ideas about his speech.

Being unshakeable in the justness of my cause, I asked him how on earth could he talk in such cold words and lay down burdens on peoples’ shoulders. It couldn’t possibly matter to God whether your heart happened to warm or cold, soft or hard. Well, of course he didn’t exactly react the way I would have wanted to. He was listening very reluctantly and looked like he was ready to turn away any minute.

I finally understood that it was like talking to a wall. Most certainly he was one of those pastors who thought they should do all the talking and others should stay out of this religious business, the women should keep quiet and so on. It was like I was trying to lit a match in the darkness but only created unneeded friction. In the end, he said coldly he would take into account my concern in the next sermon, but it didn’t sound to me very credible. And now additionally, I had to bear the guilt of being so disrespectful. If he didn’t understand anything, I was arguing for no reason.

Over these couple of weeks, I found myself often thinking of this frighteningly cold and condemning person and for my surprise, I felt something warm and new in my heart. That you would put your mind to your work and then hear somebody mock it down, and still endure that courageously. Seeing this, I realized what kind of person he really was. And I was waiting to see him again.

Yesterday I went to the same church again. I was thinking on my way whether I should go and apologize to him. But as I got there, I realized I was so tired I could only lean on my chair and try my best to stay awake. I could hardly concentrate on what the pastor was saying.

But all of a sudden, I saw a bright candle lighting up in his speech, I heard him use the most beautiful expressions such as sharing the word, the spirit of prophecy and the like. Upon his invitation, many people came in the front and told their stories, and over and over again, I saw a candle light up after another, till the whole room was lit. I looked at it and I recognized it, and I remembered it: the light. I wasn't sure whether I was warm or cold, whether I would dare go walking on the grass with my bare feet, but at least I knew the summer was there.

Sybille's creative pieces in French

2008-08-12T14:30:00.000+02:00

Hello!
I have been writing a few more pieces, both in English and in French. I figured out that I would post them in another blog, as some of you may not understand French. I'll keep posting on this blog as soon as I write something good.
The link is http://creativemishmash.blogspot.com/
Don't hesitate to leave your comments!

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 basics of Creative Writing*

2008-08-08T11:41:00.000+02:00

'Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.'

* Bagombo Snuff Box

Belfast calling Brussels

2008-08-02T04:18:00.000+02:00

A quick note at 3 a.m. to say thanks for being such Nerds. Sad I missed your last days but we will be back. And we will always be here. Thanks Monica for organising us, Bibil for working so hard on my pics and for trying and get me on to the blog and to Dottir for succeeding. I love all of your recent posts. keep them coming. The worlds your stage, summer stagie's.

Daisies (a poem by John)

2008-07-31T12:47:00.000+02:00

Moments of intimacy, in a public place
fine down bristles caress
goosebumpped canvas
Tickles, cool trickles
Moving softly over warm flesh
Throb of music, hum of voices
A haven of peace in this crowded corner
Golden or white petalled waves and spirals
Vegetation growing on bare skin
Smooth shoulders sensuous, Space invaded
Draw close, Move with me
Rest your arm here
Push back the curls
Expanse of pale neck
Fine downy hair
Pale, sensitive
Unexplored
Soft murmer
It feels nice
Oh .. that’s lovely

Thank you
You made me feel special
You made me feel beautiful
(but you were already)
Someday I will paint your portrait

Wake me up

2008-07-31T12:40:00.000+02:00

A tribute to R.E.M. paralysis

Try to escape. Dry and tired of dread,
These eyes are trapped. These eyes are to be sold.
The darkness was so comforting once,
And now it's cursed. And these feet are cold.

Someone might be with me in this room,
Someone might be dressing up to leave.
But I can't wake up to see this someone's face
And I cannot speak. And I cannot breath.

Someone might be here in this room, still.
And I wish, I wish, I wish it wasn't me.
I want someone to give me back my will,
I claim for light. I demand sanity.

I wonder who is wearing my old clothes
I wonder who is wearing my old smile
I wonder who is using my old voice
If I'm not here, I wonder, where am I?

Someone is here but I can't see the face
Someone is here but I can't hear the voice
Someone is here, but I can cry no tears
Someone is here but I cannot make noise

Someone still might be here in this room
Someone who could give me back my breath
I promise that I won't be afraid of life
Just don't leave me here being scared to death

A clash of generations

2008-07-24T12:17:00.001+02:00

- All that matters in life is a good family, your health and an interesting job – in that particular order!
She had to turn away because her tears were filling up her eyes and the last thing she wanted was for him to see her cry.
- True, but in this world no-one can make you happy but yourself. Not being dependent is the main goal, remember?
- How can that be when all I think about is YOUR happiness? If you are not happy, I am not happy! When you smile, I smile!
- Well, that is not how it should be. We are all responsible for our own happiness and have to create it by ourselves. “Nothing is so good, it last eternally. Perfect situations must go wrong…” The song came to her so forcefully that she had to check if the radio was on. But it was not, it was all in her head! “But this has never yet prevented me, from wanting far too much for far too long.”
- Sorry, what? Did you say anything?
She turned around and looked at him. But he was silent and kept silent for the rest of the drive…And she was left with her own thoughts and memories.

A sea of numbers

2008-07-24T12:15:00.000+02:00

I feel lost. I am there, alone among a sea of lonely souls and no rescue is to be found. Around me there is fear, tears, lonely hearts and abandon creatures. Once part of an identity but now nothing else than just another number in an incomprehensive pile of numbers, waiting to be counted, categorized, classified and forgotten. Once part of a culture, a heritage, a past and dreams of the future. Now just another shadow in the sad and dark part of the world where smiles are vicious and kindness a sign of weakness. Once part of an entity, a family, a clan or tribe, a society of importance and with respect to be earned. Now left with nothing else than praying for the willingness of the rest to stay alive, to live or die.

I am among you. I am one of you. I am part of you, your flesh and blood, your sister and brother, mother and father, family. I am with you and yet I am not. I am someone, yet no-one, nothing to be said and done. In this lonely sea of despair, fear and lost dreams they are the captains, they are the once with boats and they have the power to decide…Who will survive and who will be left behind. We are the waves, drifting endlessly in the sea and only stopping when we hit the shore, finally finishing our journey, just to die.

I used to be somebody. I used to be more than a number, a part of your statistical tables and graphs. I used to be special, important, part of the inner circle of life and love. I used to be a fighter, a survivor, a traveler and an individual with goals. I used to be everything but in your hands I am lost!

It is time. My time has come. A step ahead, then another one. A long and painful silent procedure toward becoming a no-one forever doomed to everlasting silence and anonymous…Gone! Name, age, origin, height, weight, colour of the eyes and skin…I am stripped off all my belongings one by one. I am robbed off my privileges and characteristics step by step. I am becoming their no-one, dying forever, and becoming just another number on the list. You can take me, strip med down, even kill me…But my dreams will stay and they will keep me alive, preserving me as the one.

Black

2008-07-23T11:27:00.001+02:00

My name is Clarity. That is because my mother wanted me to be as beautiful as light and to only speak the truth. She believed that names make you what you are. If she had to name me again, I think she would choose “Sanity”. The way my mind works has been a very unsettling thing for her.

I would tend to agree, but Helen says that actually, my twisted mind has been my greatest success so far. Helen is my agent, she finds clients who buy my work. I am an artist, I paint. Paintings are not a difficult thing to sell if they please the eyes of the bourgeoisie, Helen says. Mines do, so I am selling a lot of them.

This morning at 5:26 am, I finished my 348th painting, oil on a 30x60 canvas. It’s a purple and magenta horse riding on a black sea, though one could hardly manage to see what it is anymore, except that it is dark. It will go well with the sand colours of the rich peoples’ beach houses.
As usual, Helen visits my studio at 8 AM. She knocks on my door and opens it at the same time. She is wearing pink gloves and a hand-knitted white scarf. She is the one who should have been named Clarity. “Seems like this Hollywood Cerise is fitting your style” she says.
I love that about her. She can always tell the exact colours even when all I can see is just “pink” or “blue”. “Have you managed to sell them?” I ask.
“Rather well. They’ve all been taken by this new restaurant, you know, this five stars place I talked about the other day. They paid a high price. They are going for purple and black, you see, and it turned out that this touch of red-pink really did add something”.
“How is the lighting going to be?”
“As you suggested: soft. Candle lights, mostly, and a few bulbs here and there. Nothing too flashy. It’s going to be a chic and intimate place.”
“Good”.
Helen briefs me about the media reviews and latest trends but I barely listen to her. I have been painting all night. My muscles are sore and my arms tremble a little from holding a brush for too long. The restaurant wants to complete the collection, she says.
I will work on a commission. It’s going to be a large 200x250 canvas. This artwork is going to be what everyone who’s anyone will see when they enter the place. It’s going to do the cover of magazines. My painting will be the restaurant’s main feature. No, it will be the restaurant. Therefore, it must be a masterpiece. The restaurant liked my darker work, but now they want something else. They want bright, powerful and vivid. But mostly, they want light.
“What’s wrong with the black?” I ask.
“Nothing wrong, no, nothing wrong. They just want a contrast. A kind of Chiaroscuro of your own definition.”
“I’m not good with light”, I say.
“Clarity, you’re brilliant. You just don’t have the material”. But she does. Helen had planned everything. She’s got the colours in a bag along with pictures of the place. She’ll have the canvas delivered within the day. It’s going to be a very good pay. I should keep painting horses and children, the restaurant liked that theme. I suspect Helen to have made up the last part: how could they see what I was meaning to paint?
So there will be no sleep today. The trouble is, light is not my friend, it panics me. I like to paint with black colours. My work is deep, is dark, is dim. It’s Clarity painting the night.

I make myself two cups of coffee and draws off the curtains. What an irony to be named Clarity and not to know how to paint things white. I start making outlines on my sketch book. The restaurant wants vivid shapes. I would give him curves like if I was painting magma and flames.

You must wonder why I paint black. My mother doesn’t like it. She says it is all the evil of my dark soul projected on canvas. She sees black as the lack of colours, of light, as a nothing. Little does she know that black actually is a strong combination of colours. Black is not empty, it is full. It absorbs the light, it absorbs the heat, it is more mighty and warm than any other pigment. Besides, my first clients thought that it was elegant. “Clarity is the new black”, the press liked to say. Yet it also said I depicted a “world of shadow and unending darkness”, as if obscurity was somehow my distress. Most people fail to see how comforting black is. It is no black hole, it is no chaos. It is quite. Black is silence.

Light is nature’s ultimate fury.

I play around with the colours, simmering my brush into what now looks like a frosty pink. I don’t want pink, it’s cold, and if I am to paint light I must paint it warm. Light had been so warm that night. I first thought I should be painting something mundane, a colour I could call “amaranth” or “alizarin” without feeling pretentious. There will be no pretension. Horses and children, what an irony. I’ve been meaning to paint this for a while. It’s an excruciating path to take.

I was ten. My mother wanted me to play with the upper class kids, so every summer she sent me away to horse riding camp. I went because it made her proud. Besides, I liked the place. I liked the horses, of course, and I spent a lot of time drawing them, but mostly I liked the countryside. I liked the sounds of the nightfall, the frogs croaking, the bats sending ultrasound signals and the owls doing their owl stuff. How fascinating it must be to see what other animals cannot! But children were not allowed to go out at night because it wasn’t safe. The building was inescapable, everything was locked. It wasn’t necessary because the other kids were afraid of the dark: they thought that this was the time when the monsters crept out from beneath their beds. Yet I didn’t fear. I let the protecting mantle of the darkness surround me. At night time, you hear people breathing in their sleep, gentle dreams dancing through their heads. You hear the silence of the world, the hidden little sounds of the invisible. Then you start to think. You start to think about the things that your mind does not understand clearly. You think, you rest, you think, you rest, everything is quiet, and then you see it. You see the truth.

I am like an owl, I only see clear in the dark.

On that particular night, though, it was not normal. The darkness wasn’t dark. The silence wasn’t silent. You could hear the sound of wood cracking, like a campfire, except that the heat was much, much stronger. Then suddenly there were flames, licking the roof, devouring the fabrics with their violent gluttony. We were breathing ashes and red dust. It burned. There were ten of us, but because the building was locked, only eight managed to get out.

I never went to horse riding camp again.

I am brushing large strokes with rapid moves. There are the flames, the forces of destruction and light. What I am doing is raw. It is my pain, my fears, my losses, my cries. It is all what the earth took from me in its enlightened cruelty. I am painting horses and children crushed in a scarlet whirl. They wanted warm? I will give them a combustion. I am sweating from the effort provoked by the strength of my strokes. The canvas is my fight. I rip the colour tube open with a knife and throws white paint in the explosion. My chest feels about to burst. My work looks like a murder scene.

Then comes the night, and I cannot see the light anymore. It’s all dark. My mind stops racing. I remember I haven’t slept or eaten for more than 30 hours. I am tired, but more than that, I feel at peace.

When Helen arrives in the morning, she stands immobile in the front door. My masterpiece is there, disturbing, in front of her.
“Dark tangerine” is all she manages to say.

Control

2008-07-14T13:44:00.000+02:00

Exercise: write a short scene from the point of view of a man who has a long history of controlling a woman. Keep in mind this question: why does she stay with him?

I found a cookie box at the back of the cupboard. Again. She’s got this craving for sweet things so typical of immature women.
_ Honey, I don’t think that this item was on the shopping list, was it? I say accusingly.
She has to confess.
_ No, it wasn’t.
_ So why did you buy it?
_ Because I wanted to.
_ Don’t you think that it’s a bit unnecessary?
_ It is only one cookie box.
Her words are provocative but her body language is not. She looks embarrassed by the way I gaze at her. She’s been found guilty. How many times did we have this conversation before? She knows that the cookies are bad for her. She’s always on the edge of getting overweight. It costs us money – my money. Money which could be spent on useful things.
_ So this week you bought cookies, but last week you also bought shortbreads, and the week before, brownies. It’s not just one box of cookies, darling. It’s all the boxes that you keep on buying.
_ I can’t help it. I like sweet things so much.
Her voice is plaintive by now.
_ You like them but you don’t need them, love.
_ I don’t care.
_ Do not pretend not to care. I know how you are feeling about your weight. You don’t even want me to look at you wearing underwear. Eating these things will not help you to solve the problem.
She doesn’t say anything at first, as if she was trying to catch her breath, then she said in that broken voice she uses every time she wants me to pity her:
_ Stop calling it a problem. It is insensitive.
_ Sweetheart. You know I’m only saying this because I care for you. You’ve got to control your eating frenzies. I can’t control them for you all time.
_ Then don’t. I am not a child.
I grin. She is a child. A big child. She cannot take care of herself. If I wasn’t there, she would have been obese by now. I smile and I say in a cajoling tone:
_ I have so much affection for you, dear. You cannot reproach me to show you attention.
Then in a more passionate tone,
_ You know what? Eat them if you want. Eat them in front of me. I will not say anything. We’ll go to the gym class on Monday.
I kiss her on the cheek. She does not refuse me.
She’s a bit upset, but her protest is only formal. The cookie box is only a small incident on her way to perfection. We’ve made so much progress lately. Before we got together there were so many things that she was doing wrong! She lacked self confidence on every aspect of her life. She could never decide what she wanted for herself. She was miserable. For everyone except for herself, it was clear that she couldn’t be on her own. All aspects of her body and mind were looking for a guide. She was lost. I found her.
Since I’ve been there for her, life has been the happiest for both of us. She needed me and in return she gave me unconditional admiration and love. I was her hero. I do need to have her feeling this way about me. That’s what makes our love so strong: we cannot live if not with each other.
_ You will never let me go, will you? She says in a joyful but yet defiant tone.
_ Dear. You know I could never abandon you, I reply.
Then she cuddles in my arms. For a moment, I wonder if she might have meant: “will you ever set me free?”. This worried me a lot lately. I am afraid that there will be a time when she will not need me anymore. What will I do then?
But I don’t need to think about this for now. She takes the cookie box, pretends to open it, then hesitates and throws it away. I have to remember to check whether the box stays exactly on the same spot of the trash bin.
I will never let her go.

Pictures!

2008-07-10T14:38:00.001+02:00

Here are the pictures! Taken by Monica, Sahar and Edina.

More pictures available on the Who is Who DVD.

What was the Creative Writing Subcommittee?

2008-07-10T14:33:00.000+02:00

The folder that we gathered for the Who is Who looks great, with a lot of pictures, texts, sketches and videos. I am very impatient that you can all see it. In the meantime, here is the text that I wrote as an introduction to the folder (with Monica's part published in the backstage journal).

Photos will come next... Don't forget to publish your texts on the blog!

***

Monica Westeren described the Creative Writing Subcommittee a few weeks after its creation in these terms:

"The subcommittee for creative writing was formed on a buzzing night in an Irish pub near Schuman: a bunch of Commission stagiaires, looking for their lost creativity amidst EU Directives and Regulations; speaking points and briefing notes.
We share at least one passion: Literature. (And perhaps even another: Finnish chocolate, judging by the big turnout of people at the first meeting, after being promised a piece of the brown gold).
The first theme to write on was "intercultural miscommunication" – an area where we are all experts. Living in at least a couple of EU countries gives you a taste for the vastly different behaviour across the borders. Whether it is about eating manners, time management or ability to speak to strangers, at some point you are bound to run into difficulties. We saw these misunderstandings as a great source of inspiration, and decided to let our imagination run wild…"

It has now been five months filled with creative meetings, picnics and drinks. We gathered every Tuesday night around a glass of wine to let our creativity flow. Each reunion brought different themes and writing styles to learn from. The first meetings were attentively planned, with texts to read and themes to write on. Yet progressively, we all found our own directions and our own ways to express ourselves through words on paper – or with the help of sketches or a guitar.

As for my own experience, the spark of inspiration arrived at the first meeting. Sharing my passion for writing was something new to me. So far, my only audience had been friends and family, none of them being able to give me a feedback from a writer's perspective. On that day, Sahar was reading a dialogue with no title, which was later called "a clash of generation". I arrived home at midnight, sat down and wrote until three. It had been six years since I last touched a pen. Looking back, I am surprised I have managed to live without it. Forgotten sensations came back at once: the chill of expressing the inexpressible, of gathering a cluster of words into something meaningful. Going back to writing was like being reunited with a childhood friend.
Each of us had unique ways to tell things. Monica, the founder of the group, focused mostly on gender difference, a topic which was brought to a new light with David's male point of view. Edina, our writeaholic and cofounder of the Committee, wrote pages of powerful stories with a poetic touch; equally poetic were Ruth's short stories and Marcin's longer novels. Erna's and Sahar's texts were more vivid, based on dialogues at first, then slowly developing towards a greater introspection. Then there were John's creative pieces, on paper yet rarely as a prose: poems, sketches, songs, in whichever direction his inspiration drove him.
It was a great bunch of inspired people, and for sure an exclusive experience. We turned out to prove that creative writing could cross boundaries and languages, to form a sort of "intercultural communication", as to prove our first theme wrong.

T.C. Boyle, Chixculub

2008-07-02T11:26:00.000+02:00

I read a really good and powerful novel called Chixculub by T.C. Boyle. I thought I would share it with you. It was published in the New Yorker in 2004.
Here is the link

Writing exercise: the reluctant I

2008-06-22T17:00:00.000+02:00

I have been writing a short story based on the following writing exercise. The aim is to experiment point of views and the use of the first/third persons. I will publish my text in a few days to leave some time to anyone who wishes to write one as well.

The Reluctant I

Write a first-person story in which you use the first-person pronoun (I or me or my) only two times - but keep the I somehow important to the narrative you're constructing. The point of this exercise is to imagine a narrator who is less interested in himself than in what he is observing. You can make your narrator someone who sees an interesting event in which he is not necessarily a participant. Or you can make him self-effacing, yet a major participant of the events related. It is very important in this exercise to make sure your reader is not surprised, forth or fifty words into the piece, to realize that this is a first-person narration. Show us quickly who is observing the scene. 500-600 words.

Taken from: KITELEY (Brian), The 3 A.M. Epiphany: uncommon writing exercises that transform your fiction, Ohio, Writer's Digest Books, 2005.

Alternatively: I also practiced on the use of the imperative form. The exercise comes from the same book and asks, basically, to write a 500 words story using the imperative form: Do this, Don't do that, etc. For example, Hear my neighbour come home from her night shift. Remember the sound of the key lock when I see her in the morning. The author believes that this is also an interesting exercise to see how you will organise the timing of the sequences, i.e. how these imperatives are following each other in a time frame. I will write down the complete exercise as soon as I am home again.

John's sketches

2008-06-05T09:41:00.000+02:00

The pictures are uploaded on Flickr so you can download them in full resolution. Just click on the picture you like and choose the button "all sizes" then "original size" then "download the original size".
John, could you please make your own comments on your sketches?

A story based on Monica's dream

2008-05-30T17:44:00.000+02:00

''The story which I am to tell you, will be recited 200 years after my death. I will have returned to soil, as should be, and so will my children and great grand-children have done. Only Ada will still be around. I planted her in 2010, on my 52 birthday''

It was an early summer afternoon, and the sun was strong and sharp, through which one could see leaf of dusts as little snowflakes and white tiny flowers carrying through the widow from the garden. All was full of life. All of the nature uttered sounds, working hard. The green, this green was inimitable. I had to close my eyes. The light was too bright. A bee flowed and sat close to the wardrobe. I observed her delicate wings and their fast moves. She continued to walk as she knew the way. I realised that she went into the space between the wardrobe and wall where I saw to my surprise a kind of shelf. I decided to shift the wardrobe a little bit in order to find out that shelf. Bee flown nervously. I took out my hand and found in her a riddled notebook, with the sketch of Montmartre on brown cover. I saw that there are more similar notebooks, all in the same state, with the Paris cover. I leafed through the notebook hastily seeing yellow pages filled with petty handwriting being written with ink that become to fade away.
I heard some sound of breaking porcelain, oh god that must be Anna, so nervous, as usual. We do not have too much time. We need to prepare the entire house and the garden before new landlords will move in. I got a headache from yesterday for with Tosiek and Anna we celebrated the selling of the house. And Janusz our youngest brother congratulated us via the skype: it is indeed a good deal – he said.
Yes, indeed a good deal, best we could have. The house was old, needed general renovation and they paid surprisingly good money. They have already showed us the plan for new hotel and new garden. They were so excited – and here in the middle we will build a swimming pool. Even Gorlice need a three star hotel. Honestly, I do not care about this plan; I think it is crazy to invest here, in a middle of nowhere and I think they going to bankrupt very soon.
They were like from the moon, I mean from Warsaw, and they did not negotiate the price. The neighbours were jealous. And as for me – I signed with relief. It was pointless to pay all taxes and costs for a house like this, huge, old and so expensive, and nobody lived there, nobody wanted to move. Only Anna disagreed. She was sentimental and cried yesterday. Well, there was something in her arguments – it is a house built by our parents. And our mother was so determine not to sell it, she always repeated – ''it is all you have''. But Anna was a retired teacher and could not have enough money to maintain the house and to pay our parts. It was then better for all, better for all……
Besides, for me this house always brought some burdens, and unnecessities. All the holidays I had to come here from Katowice a distance of 300 kilometres, and recently even every second week when she had started to have problems with legs. She was so stubborn not to move to the city. Parents...so stubborn, both. They had saved all their money for that house, all their lives! I did not have even pocket money! And recently the garden has became dark and moist, for mother forbid to chop all these old, not bearing fruits, these silly crooked apples trees that overshadowed the house. It was something I could not really believed. How many times we asked to cut these god damned trees?
No time, no time, hangover, we drunk a little bit too much, and then I dreamt about Anna's tears. I do not feel pity at all. You should be more pragmatic. Less burdens, more happiness. That the way it is. My poor sister could not understand the simplest message. No time….Calm down, calm. How many times I had to repeat all that thoughts? How many times I had to go through this labyrinth? Everything has been decided. I should feel now calm. I need to feel calm. And I cannot not. All the time the same burden, when it will stop to heavy my head?
I saw I bowed this strange notebook. There was something in it, a breath of the past, forgotten smell or shape that I could not resist that pushed me to open it once more and pushed me to read my father's diligent writing:

''All my life was full of work and duties. And pain. As a youth, I suffered and could not stand any injustice. But still I believe in good part of the world. I always believed that there is a kind of message in all that moves of nature, like in a game of chess.''

''I meet her in a spa; she was as young as I was. My lungs had already begun to heal; I could spend more hours in the garden with the wild apple trees. She said to me once that she knew she is going to die''

''Love means life and once more I could feel it in my soul. Sometimes I could feel I have two hearts. It was light and good. I could not sleep. Next day I returned home''

''M accepted me; although she knew everything, she knew all at first glance, just looked at my eyes in the platform at the Railway station''

''I found a beautiful quote in Westeren's famous book, something about Ada, and the tree. It was first quote in my diary. I was dreaming about a story of revolutionists from Peru that has been rectified 200 years after his death. I think that our life is even more beautiful because true one and even more magical, for based on facts. Sorrow disappeared for a while when I planted a new apple tree in my garden – Ada''

''I think this ordinary feeling that with passing time you have forgot to name as love, that we had with M, is like our garden. The older the more beautiful.''

Anna went to the room, and smiled:
– Why you laugh? Did you find something funny?
I hid the notebook quickly and could not answer. I watched her wrinkles and tired but still full of light eyes.
– What do have there? Did you find something?
– Well.. Nothing special. Just some stupid bills of mother – she smiled even brighter. Her wrinkles for a moment disappeared.
– ach her bills. Funny woman. You remember? She used to write all her expenses. Well... OK, please hurry, we have only two hours
– I know I know. We will manage Anna.
She went back with reluctance. I threw the notebook away. I didn't want to read it any more. My father as a writer, poet, or whatever. I started to laugh. Miserable. He was coal miner! Or I should cry and cry out loud. Shame of all these lies. Shame of their imagination! It must not be truth. And even if it is, we should not know anything about it; another romance of our father. Another disgrace. Such a contradiction - for all we remember his calm face while he was sitting on the bench in the garden waiting for the twilight; he seemed to be noble, all his moves were full of charm even the way he held his waning cigarette between his fingers; his steadiness and awaiting, and silence that I could not stand. Once I asked him what did he think? He did not react. I left him alone. Now I know… we all supposed something. I decided to burn all the notebooks. It has to be like this. Anna could cry and Tosiek could feel an unnecessary burden. It was my duty to cut the past. I was the oldest. I tore only one page and place it in my pocket. Later, after we gave the keys to new landlords, in Tosiek's car, on the way back to Katowice, I have read on the faded, yellow page:

''What year, what month, what day? I can not longer hear the birds surrounding young Ada; her leaves vanish from my sight''

By the rivers of Babylon (by John)

2008-05-19T17:16:00.000+02:00

Blurb & Babel
Gobbeldygook
Commissionese
In bucketloads

Endless streams
Reams and reams
Weighty tomes with
Glossy pics
Little children
Czechs or Greeks

Machine translation
Babelfish;
Much more babble
No more FISH
More gook to be gobbled
In staff canteens.

Fonctionnairres gabble as they gobble
in third languages
About third worlds and second marriages
Comissinglish
Jargon phrases strung in line
Continuous sentences
Cohesion policies
Contiguous concepts,

Not Mighty Nimrud
Nor Nebudchadnezzar in all his glory
Built such a Babylon
No, Leonardo, Erasmus or Phare-oh
Faced such communication breakdown
Neither Breughel's art Nor Bosch's nightmare could
Foresee such horrors;-

Words grow legs.
Letters breed -

EU
EP
SME
ESC
ESF
SME
NOW
ERDF
FIFG
EAGGF
PESCA
REGEN
URBAN
RETEX
ADAPT
STRIDE
PRISMA
RECHAR
LEADER
KONVER
RESIDER
HORIZON
ENVIREG
INTERREG
RENAVAAL
EMPLOYMENT
TELEMATIQUE
YOUTHSTART

Has, ever in the concours of human endeavour,
So little been owed by so few to so many
Social Partners and Scientific experts
Their words going down in history
Down, down,
History grumbles and groans
drowns under vocab
Gurgles below the grammar
Spits and spots
Sprinkles and splashes
Pools and puddles
Showers, and streams
Rivers and raging torrents
Tides, waves and whirlpools
Eddies and ebbs and flows
An old world destroyed in the deluge

No Gilgamesh or Noah ever gooked gobble like these
Stepping into brave new world, Europabylon
Towers, higher than Babel
Not Nebuchdnezzars boastful bricks
Or hanging gardens
But shiny glass
Towering mounds of words
Endless sentences, with no beginning
subject buried 'neath depths
of Structural regional Subsidiarity,
Globalised Relocations
Restructurings and Adjustment funds

Institutions, member States, regional Authorities
Initiatives and frameworks of cumulated and coordinated analyses
Countless commissioners crafting communications for coming councils.
Competing to capitalise on practices and fostering multi actors approaches to change and restructuring via the restructuring forum
QED

Full forests of fine firs and costly cedars
Consumed to enshrine forever the
Wisdom of Babylon's seers
Hymns to Marduk
Songs of Uruk
Cohesive but incoherent
Still prognosticating on the changing weather
Climactic change
Fulsome, unwholesome,
Endogenous, Indigenous, exogenous. Nitrogenous.

John Rubery

Writing excersices by Monica

2008-05-19T17:06:00.000+02:00

1. Continue the story that starts in this way:
"The first time was amazing. The second time pretty good. The third time she was indifferent and by the fourth time she was bored. She could no more. And then the circle started all over again."

OR

2. Complete the story that starts in the following way:
"The story which I am about to tell you, will be recited 200 years after my death. I will have returned to soil, as should be, and so will my grand-children and great grand-children have done. Only Ada will still be around (hopefully - if the vegetation on earth has not changed drastically). I planted her in 2010, on my 52 birthday.

AND finishes like this:

"What year, what month, what day? I can no longer hear the birds surrounding young Ada; her leaves vanish from my sight."

So, if you choose number 1, all you need to do is FINISH the story. If you choose number 2, write the chore of the story, as the beginning and the end are already given!

Vonnegut for Tuesday

2008-05-19T17:00:00.000+02:00

Hello all, the reading for this Tuesday is a Vonnegut short story, you can find it here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=317695&pageno=2

We'll meet at Monica's at 8. Thanks to the crazy weather we can build a snowman in her garden. It will be fun! Looking forward to see you and read your stories,

Ed

Emilit

2008-05-19T16:27:00.002+02:00

I thought about childhood as a period to survive. I thought that life will start when I grow up and I will be surrounded by friendly adults who will discuss food prices in calm, comforting voice, while drinking cold lemonade on a shaded terrace. I decided that once I will grow up I will never again speak to any child and that if a child will come to me on the street to ask what the time is, I will turn my back on her, and start whistling.
When I was six I was forced to go to school. Until that time I was all right with life and life was all right with me. Even my mother was all right with me at those early years, if I remember well. I never had a father. Normal little girls had fathers, sitting in the armchair of the living room and watching football.
At school I was forced to sit in one place for forty minutes, quietly, motionless. I felt an intolerable tension, as if my body was preparing to explode. I saw myself blowing up, covering the faces of my classmates with a million little particles of Emily. That is my name: Emily. I always felt disconnected from my name. It might have been accidentally exchanged in the newborn department, I thought. There was nothing Emilyish in me. Emily is a blond girl, pale skinned and blue eyed, playing with dolls and wearing a white skirt with yellow flowers. I had dark hair, dark skin and dark eyes, like a goblin. Goblins can be called Gorlak or Singra, possibly Ashanti, but not Emily. I suspected a fatal mistake had happened somehow in the newborn department. What if I was really the child of a happy and loud family with countless brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles? What if my mother had been to the hospital because of a serious flu, and by accident she was sent home with a baby? She might have been too polite to uncover the misunderstanding, as she never liked to reject authorities, such as greengrocers or a nurse. That's what I was in her life: a fatal error.
In the mornings when I stared out of the school bus window, a goblin was looking back at me from outside, with big, dark goblin eyes.
" Hello goblin". I said every morning.
"Hello goblin". The goblin said every morning.
During the breaks at school I was exposed to the endless ignorance of my classmates. They would stand in the courtyard, girls in white skirts in a circle, chatting and laughing. Once in a while I collected all my courage, and approached them. Words can’t kill, but silence can. They stopped speaking, demonstrating how unwanted my company was. That was their game, the only game they played with me: the shut up game. I was standing there, puzzled. I wanted to say something but didn’t find anything to say. So I was just staring at them. That was the only game I could offer to play with them: the staring game. Who can bear it longer without Blinking (?) ? I always won. So they blinked and I went back to the classroom, and sat there until the end of the break.
One afternoon, after an unbearably quiet day, I went home and switched on the television, to fill my head with noises. I chose a football game: television can scare the hell out of you if you are alone at home and it’s getting dark outside, but there is nothing less scary than a football game. Suddenly I found my father sitting in the armchair, watching the game. He had white hair and long white beard; he was a mixture of Santa Claus, Gandalf and God. I leaned my back against his calves, and watched the television with him. I didn’t say a word; I didn’t want to break the harmony of the moment.
"Why do you sit on the floor?" – My mother asked me when she arrived home. – "And why do you watch football? Normal little girls play with dolls, and never watch football".
I didn’t like to play with my dolls, because my dolls were blind and deaf. I could do or say anything to them, but they remained silent. I combed their hair and I dressed them, but they didn’t say a word and I didn’t feel satisfaction. I cut their hair short as if they were soldiers, and gave them orders to kill the enemy, but they didn’t move or say a word, and I didn’t feel satisfaction. I bit their nose, wrung their arms, pushed them under the water, but they didn’t say a word. I hid their abused bodies in the laundry, but my mother found them. I knew that I deserved to be punished, but my mother didn’t say a word, just placed them back on the shelf of my room. My dolls were staring at me accusingly, noseless, with arms untwisted, and I didn’t dare to fall asleep.
On the weekends I tried to play with my mother, but she was always busy with working, cooking, cleaning.
" Do you want me to help, mum?" I asked her.
"Go to play, Emily". She said.
"I don’t know how to play". I said.
" Every little girl knows how to play". She said.
I didn’t know though. No one ever taught me. I was sitting in my room, staring at my dolls. They stared back at me. That was what we were playing: the staring game. Who can do it longer without blinking? They always won.
My happiest day at school was when the new girl came. She was standing alone in the courtyard during the long break, and I collected all my courage to approach her. I didn’t know what to say to her, but I felt comforted already not being alone.
She smiled at me and said that her name was Joan but I can call her Joe. I laughed, and said to her that my name is Emily but she can call me Richard. She didn’t find my joke funny, but she tolerated my company all break long, and I felt full with gratitude. By the end of the day I asked her if she wants to be my best friend. She said she will think about it. I told her that I never had a best friend before, and she could come over after school one day to play with my dolls.
I was so excited to have a best friend that I got high fever on that evening and my mother didn’t let me to go to school, despite my tears and craving. I was forced to stay at home for one week. Next Monday I found my best friend in the circle of the white skirts and yellow flowers. I didn’t dare to approach her there; I had to wait for a moment when she was alone.
Finally she left the circle and entered the school building. I followed her, and found her in the bathroom, washing a spot out of her white skirt. I didn’t know what to say to her.
" Why are you staring at me? " She asked.
"I’m not staring at you. That’s all I found to say.
" Yes, you are staring at me".
" I'm not".
I wanted to ask her if she wants some magic chewing gum, I wanted to ask her if she wants to come over after school to play with my dolls, but my tongue was paralyzed.
"Stop staring at me!" – She snapped at me.
I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t dare to look at her anymore. So I stared at the yellow flowers on her white skirt.
"Leave me alone, please". She sighed. "I’m new and I need to find friends".
She left me alone in the bathroom. I went back to the classroom and was sitting there until the geography class had started. The teacher was speaking about the mountains, the mines in the mountains, and the minerals in the mines, and I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. I wished she had been talking about the goblins and elves living in the mines of the mountains, but she didn’t say a word about them, as if they didn’t exist at all. I felt again the overwhelming compulsion to run round and round the classroom, to scream, to explode. Goblins know how to turn invisible. I climbed silently under my desk, and started to crawl out.
I just have to reach the door and then I can start running. No one would miss me if I leave, and I wouldn’t miss anyone, so if this world is a logical world they will let me leave.
"Ms Mansfield, Emily is under my table! "A girl yelled. I wasn’t invisible anymore, the magic had gone.
-"Emily", - the teacher asked," would you share with us what exactly are you doing under the table?"
I didn’t know what to reply. I was staring at the feet of the screaming girl.
"She thinks she is a bear, she wants to crawl back to the circus". Someone whispered, and the girls were giggling. I pictured myself in the circus, crawling around with bears, jumping through flaming rings, and I had to laugh.
"You are making jokes here? You find it funny, Emily?" The teacher asked. " What will your mother say about this?"
"Why can’t you be a normal little girl like your classmates?" – My mother asked me that evening, after consulting with Ms Mansfield.
" I’m not a little girl". – I said.
If they were little girls, then I couldn’t be one.
"What are you then, if not a little girl?" – My mother asked me. "A little boy?"
A goblin is neither a he, nor a she. A goblin is an ‘it’. Emilit.
" I can be invisible". I said. " I can disappear anytime I want. Do you want me to show you?"
I held my breath and disappeared. Then I exhaled and appeared again.
" I don’t like little girls". I said to my mother. "If I will ever be a mother and I give birth to a little girl, I will leave her in the supermarket. Or exchange her for a male dog".
"Emily, Emily, Emily!". – My mother said.
The following day I was standing on the courtyard of the school, and suddenly I found myself in the centre of the circle. This was the moment I had always dreamed of, and when finally it happened, my blood ran cold.
"We will play with you". They said.
I shook my head.
" I don’t want to play with you". – I said.
"You will play with us". they said. "We will play the school game. You are the teacher, and we are the students".
They gave me a piece of chalk, posted me in front of the wall, and cordoned me with their white skirts. They were waiting for the bear to perform, they wanted circus. I stared dumbly at the yellow-flowered firing squad.
I thought that the moment would never end, and that I would grow old there in the centre of the circle, but suddenly the silence exploded: they burst into screams of laughter. I stood paralyzed where I was placed, in front of the wall, in the fire of laughter.
I started screaming when my mother told me that she had asked Ms Mansfield to speak with the other little girls and tell them to play with me.
"Stop screaming". my mother said. I didn’t stop screaming. My mother went to her bedroom, locked the door and turned up the radio. I was hitting the door and screaming, until I got exhausted.
"How could she do that?" I asked my dolls. My dolls were speechless.
"How could she do that?" I asked my father. My father was speechless.
Thereafter the little girls started to play with me, and I realized how comforting my solitude was before. They took me to their homes after school, they combed my hair and dressed me, but I didn’t say a word and they weren’t satisfied. They cut my hair short and gave me orders, they bit my nose and untwisted my arms, they pushed me under the water but I remained silent and they weren’t satisfied. I was hiding in the laundry, but they found me again and placed me back on the shelf. I was staring at them, speechless, arms untwisted.
*
Then I grew up.
It took some time, but I survived my childhood. I was looking desperately for so long for those adults , speaking in calm and comforting voices, drinking cold lemonade on a shaded terrace. And when I found them, I saw that they were all wearing white skirts with yellow flowers.

Time to measure

2008-05-13T14:51:00.000+02:00

“The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness; and knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.” - Kahlil Gibran

Everybody feels sorry for me because I have no parents. The other children in my class make sure to choose me first to their team when we play football – even though I never hit the ball. When we queue for the swings, they all tell me to go ahead. The other children get punished for not doing their homework, but I just receive a tired sigh from Mrs Eglington. It doesn’t matter. I know more than them anyway.

*
I live with Ranja; she is divorced but still very attractive. I like her. She tells me stories about little princes, lost kingdoms and dragons in the evening. I think she once had a child, a boy like me, but he is gone now. I think he left because he was allergic to the antique furniture in Ranja’s house.

*
-Areth, let’s build sandcastles together, let’s build up a whole empire that we can rule over until the end of times!
-Until the end?
-Come on, our empire will be the most powerful one you’ve ever seen! Our sandcastle will be the best one ever built!
-What is best?
-Together we can make it big. Let’s make it one whole metre in diameter!
-Big?
-Yeah, like huge. We can continue working on it tomorrow, and make it even better!
-How is tomorrow?

*
I like to draw. When I am not in school, or helping Ranja with the household chores, I draw meetings between tiny figures. They are smaller than the children at school, but more intelligent. They live in the valley of Aegon, where trees are simply trees and not short or tall; where not all flowers have a name; and where today is now but so is tomorrow. Once, Ranja found me staring at one of my drawings. It had small stains of water on it, as if the ceiling in my room had been leaking.
-What have you drawn, little Areth? She asked with that sweet but oblivious voice of hers.
-It’s my family. My home. Suddenly ashamed of showing her my tears, I turned away, grabbing the drawing with me. I crumpled it into a small globe, pressing it together as much as I could, and threw it out of the window. Maybe the neighbour’s cat would find it and eat it.

*
My best friends in school are Ellinor and Imran. They tell everyone they are cousins, but I don’t believe they are related – though one day I think they will be. Our plays are more intelligent than the other children’s, because we play with our minds. We stand in a circle, holding each other’s hands with our eyes closed. Without speaking, I tell them to catch me if they can. Ellinor is always the first one to seize me. She presses my hand firmly, waiting for Imran to also receive the message.

One day when we’re playing our telepathic game, Ellinor does not answer my call. Her hand remains slack like a puppet without its master, and I feel my lungs sinking into my chest. The air is almost out, but I continue holding my breath. The sky is spinning above my head and I see the inhabitants of Aegon gathering around my little blue body. A thin woman with a pencil behind her ear is bent over me, making chirping sounds with her throat.
-My little naughty Areth, my little, tiny precious one…

*
When I open my eyes again, I find my sighing teacher kneeling next to me. She is wearing a brown hat which looks like a squirrel, and I hide my nose within my palm, so as not to have it mistaken for a nut.
-Little boys need to breath, she tells me mechanically. Otherwise they will die. I know that Ellinor and Imran are gone, and that they will not come back. “You were always the third, you were always the third, you were always the third wheel…” Their singing penetrates my brain, and I start squirming with pain. I want them to stop, but they only sing louder. I see them running hand in hand; with the same blond hair being brushed by the wind. I know now that they will become one family.
-How is third? I ask Mrs Eglington.

*
Another day, Ranja took me to the zoo to see the lions, the tigers and the ostriches. In one of her magazines, I had seen a lion feasting on a deer that had broken its leg, so I knew what they looked like. Tigers were similar, so I accepted them; but ostriches were untraceable. Ranja told me ostriches have wings, and they stick their head into the ground when they get scared. I saw in front of me a bird being chased by a lion, and suddenly stopping to cover its head in the mud. To me, ostriches did not sound like very intelligent animals.

Ranja is normally good at holding my hand and keeping track of me, but I think she was missing her little boy so much that day that she forgot to look after me. After seeing the tigers, I got bored and drifted away from my caretaker. She was busy helping a less educated girl feed little bunnies with grass. I thought about feeding the bunnies to either the lions or the tigers, and wondered whether this sight would make the ostriches hide their heads in the ground.

*
They must have been looking for me ever since the sunlight disappeared – I had heard Ranja’s normally calm voice turn high pitch and shaky. There were unknown men’s voices, too. But I was telling a new group of friends about the valley of Aegon, “where you work when you can, and sleep when you can’t”, and they embraced me in their circle of safety. No one asked when or how or why; they simply just listened. Or else they ate – if they were hungry. Or else they picked little dots from each other’s heads. It made me think of a TV programme entitled “The Next Evolution”, which Mrs Edlington had showed the whole class once. At that moment, I knew Aegon was within reach; that the time to measure would end soon, and that I then would get to experience its smell of sand, water and trees; all mixed together in a heavenly bliss.

Monica Westerén, 12.5.2008

Alert: Next session!!

2008-05-05T17:12:00.001+02:00

All my lovely creative ones, the next writing session will be tomorrow, the 6 May at my house again!

I was thinking we could start at 7:30 if people could make it - that way we'd still get to enjoy the sun and my lovely green garden! Bring some food if you like, I think I will prepare a salad like last time.

So, what do you say?! I hope many of you will come tomorrow, and that you will also bring loads of words with you... See you under the Brussels evening sun... :)

Ça va?

2008-05-05T17:00:00.000+02:00

The internal postman

In average six out of ten civil servants greet him. Two out of ten look at him. Does it mean that he is roughly invisible? Let’s make a test. Let’s move him closer to the civil servant’s table, and let him stare at the face of the civil servant at close quarters with eyes wide open.

No. He is not invisible. The civil servant nervously glances at him and asks: ça va?

Ça va.

His life can be described with these two words: ça va.

Read the story

Grand-Papa

2008-05-05T16:50:00.000+02:00

"I miss your grandmother" he says.
I look at his old face. His sand-coloured skin has become as thin as a parchment and I can spot the veins beneath it.
"Every time I wake up I still think that she would be here", he continues. "It's difficult when I understand that she is not just gone to make some tea".
"You've been married a very long time", I answer, not knowing what to say. This time he mentioned "your grandmother", which meant that he recognized me as being of his kin. He's been staring at me for a very long time. I can tell his brain is trying to remind him of someone he might have known before. He recognises my cousins because they look like their parents. Unfortunately for him my father and I are very different.
"We've been married sixty years" he replies. He looks at me with interrogative eyes and adds: "How old are you by the way?"
"I am twenty five", I answer.
He thinks very deeply before he proudly declares: "We were married more than twice the time that you've been living".
"It is a long time". I never know what to say to him. Usually I just talk about the same things all over again. He never remembers it anyway. I talk about the weather, I talk about my parents, I have to say who my father is and have to remind him that my father is his son. I came to see him once a week since he entered the hospital and he has no idea of who I am. He wouldn't notice if I stopped visiting. Sometimes I feel as if I was wasting my time, and yet I feel like a horrible person for not seeing him more often.
"How are you feeling today, Grandpa?"
"Old. My knee still hurts and I still can't walk".
"It is normal, you broke your knee a month ago", I answer.
"A month already? Yes, I suppose that at my age bruises don't heal as easily as before".
He thinks deeply again.
"When my knee will be better, I will be going home".
I know he won't, and actually, he knows it as well. He now needs constant medical assistance and my aunts have booked him a room in a senior institution. We all loved the family house, though. I have spent many summer holidays there as a child, playing with him, when he could still walk and laugh and remember my name. My grandfather was a very tall man when he was standing up. I was told that he used to be a handsome, career-driven person, yet very kind and excessively fond of his wife and children. He worked until his brain started to dislike the effects of age, then his memory began to unravel. He remained kind and very fond of everyone who was around him, though.
"Do you want to go for a walk?" I ask, which means that I am offering to push his wheelchair to the garden, and maybe to the park if he is feeling like it.
"No, I am fine", he says. "I don't know this garden".
Time is flying and nothing is being said. I know that in no time I will have to go and leave him to his loneliness. I have talked about every topic I could think of. Weather, family, daily routine stuff; all of it was covered. I eventually have to go.
My father calls me when I leave the hospital. "How is he?" he asks.
I say: "He is good."

Looking for the real thing

2008-05-05T16:30:00.000+02:00

I normally don’t go anywhere near the Eiffel tower, or any of the other touristy places, but that day I felt like emptying my mind of fine herbs, innovative sauces and the smell of rabbit slowly cooking in a sweet Alsatian wine. The chive straws I use to decorate the mousse de canard were still blinding my sight, and my clothes smelled of fried olive oil. I needed to get out of the restaurant so badly; I hadn’t even dared telling my assistants. I just left.

Le poids rouge was situated in Montmartre; in one of the side streets that tourists rarely find, as the other streets around are more lively and colourful. The flowers never bloom as much on Rue Albert Rouge. The windows are darker, and the air feels slightly stickier. I walked to metro Abesses, and travelled across the Seine to Pasteur, just next to Montparnasse train station. I thought of my brother whom I had last seen there two months ago before he went back to London to his wife and two kids. He had needed I break; I think the week in Paris served him well. He seemed a bit more happy to be alive when we kissed goodbye on the platform. I think he’ll stay by Aida’s side in the end. She is a complicated woman, and having two small copies of her certainly does not simplify matters. But he’s a man of principles at the end of the day – once he has chosen his woman, he’ll stick to her.

By the time the metro reached Concorde, I had seen five women sit down across from me. Four of them had left so far. The fifth one was elderly, with grey hair tucked in under a blue plum shaped hat. Her wrinkled hands firmly gripped a fluffy white handbag, which reminded me of a lapdog my mother used to have when we were kids. The fifth woman did not leave me. I left her. I walked towards the sliding doors (that pinch you very hard if you do not pay attention) and in the corner of my eye I saw her caressing her handbag.

The change to line six was quick, and I arrived at Bir Hakeim 49 minutes after I had left the restaurant. I felt relieved. The afternoon was sunny, and the air was full of foreign languages expressing the beauty of an 81-story high iron construction. I went straight for the hotdog stand and ordered a French one with mustard but no ketchup. I enjoyed my lunch on a bench next to the stand, watching two stray dogs fighting over a left behind sausage (Paris is full of them). The terrier was about to win over the sausage dog, which seemed like a contradiction of terms. Poor dachshund, I thought.

My lunch was interrupted by a tourist looking for “Rue A. Rouge” next to metro Anvers, and my heart did a somersault. I studied him closely, trying to determine whether he was the type to look for an unknown fine dining restaurant in Montmartre. He had blond dreadlocks, an unzipped leather jacket and somewhat baggy pants. He was carrying a backpack the same size as his upper body. His eyes were curiously looking for any sign of recognition.
-Do you happen to know it, mademoiselle? He was red in the face, and his light t-shirt was slightly wet and glued to his chest.
-I come from there, I said. He looked at me; puzzled, waiting for me to continue with my sentence.
-I came from there, I corrected myself. He seemed even more confused, and put down his backpack on the ground. Including the sleeping bag, it reached all the way up to his waist. His eyes asked if he could join me on the bench, and I nodded silently. He seemed like a sweet guy, and my stomach filled me with hope. Maybe he prefers red beans over green ones as well? Maybe he too eats and eats and eats, but never quite manages to still his hunger? Maybe he too has just one piece missing from his puzzle…?
I never got to know. He left me to buy a hot dog, asking me if I could keep an eye on his backpack. I felt slightly irritated, but told him the French one is the best one. He returned with a normal hot dog with ketchup and mustard. I watched him take the first bite, and then he went into fits. He made gasping sounds and put out his tongue like an overheated dog. I passed him my water bottle and he thanked me with his green eyes. Funny, first I had thought they were blue; but now that the sun went behind a cloud, they looked light green.
-Too hot? I asked, and he nodded. His hands looked beautiful around my Evian water bottle. They were large and tanned, with clean short nails.

He was from Canada, travelling across Europe on his own. He had done Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Belgium. Now he wanted to do Paris as well.
-I want to discover the real Paris, he explained. I don’t want to do the touristy things. On his 4th bite of the hot dog, he told me it felt like the mustard was coming out of his nose.
-It’s normal, I comforted him. It’s absolutely normal. He changed the topic. I wondered if he liked me. I turned a bit more towards him on the bench, and started twisting my hair around my right index finger.
-So… You were telling me that you came from Rue A. Rouge? Is it close to the Moulin Rouge?
-Yes and no… But I’m not really from there. I just work there. I sensed that he didn’t like being corrected, and he punished me by not asking any follow-up questions. I moved my right hand down my side in a sensual way, but he simply looked down in his guide book.
-Because there is this restaurant on that street… Le poids rouge. He pronounced it in perfect French, except that he put too much emphasis on the “poids”, which made it sound like he was referring to a shabby corner bar rather than a fine dining restaurant.
-I own it, I told him, and my chest felt enlarged. Oh. Oh! It had finally made it to the guide books! This was a special day.
-Wow! So, are you the pea? He asked with a twinkle in his eye. That’s awesome! In that case, I shall grant you the honour of my company tonight! They say in the guide book that there is nothing touristy about Le poids rouge, and that it is a good start to discover the real Paris… The way he pronounced the name of my restaurant was getting on my nerves.
-Le poids rouge, I corrected him; putting more emphasis on the ou-sound in rouge. Le poide rouge is a fine dining restaurant in one of the side least discovered side streets behind Sacre Coeur. Do you like mussels?
-I don’t know, he answered, and lifted his shoulders. Never had them!
-I just bought 2 kilos worth of mussels. Do you want to eat at my house tonight instead of the restaurant? I couldn’t believe my ears. I had just offered a complete stranger over for dinner! I didn’t even know his name. My heart was pounding, and I felt suddenly warm inside. He looked up at me, wiped some sweat off his nose and smiled.
-That’s a rather generous offer, mademoiselle… His sentence sailed up towards the blue sky, mixing with Japanese awestruck sighs about the tallest building in France.
-Amandine. I saved his words from flying away to unknown dimensions. Nice to meet you.
-Great, Amandine. I’m Gabriel. I don’t think I can say no to dinner at a professional chef’s house in Paris… It can’t get more real than that! He stood up from the bench, and started searching for something in his backpack.
-This is something small for you. He handed over a key chain in the shape of a red and white beaver. Under it was written “Roots”.
I had a date! A real Canadian date!

* * *

It was kind of weird. She was not bad, though not my definition of beauty by any stretch of imagination. She had long brown hair and her body was a bit too flat for my liking. I like them with curves, and preferably with a somewhat wider arse. I’m completely not into flat arses, but still. She was all right. I had come to Paris to escape from my ex back in Ottawa. I didn’t really want to think about her right anymore, because there was nothing else to think about. She had just left, and that was it. In a way, I think I’m better off without her.

I thought about buying flowers for Amandine, but couldn’t find a flower shop on the way to her house, so settled for chocolates instead. Carte d’Or. It sounded fancy enough; like a “golden opportunity” for something. I arrived at her house at twenty past 8 – just within the range of being fashionably late. I had made sure not to use any after shave after showering – I had read somewhere that women are more attracted to a man’s natural smell. So, here I was; au naturel, outside this real French girl’s house. I peaked into her mailbox and put my right ear towards the front door. I heard a kitchen machine working inside. I knocked five times, but she didn’t hear me. I wondered what she was wearing, and weather her arse would turn out to be as flat as I remembered. I rang the doorbell and the noise inside stopped. The front door flung open, and there she was; the most stunning girl in the neighbourhood. I felt warm inside, and put my left hand into the pocket of my brown corduroy trousers. They were of the loser type, and you can never be quite sure. I felt warm inside, as her small breasts welcomed me inside.

The house smelled of white wine and roasted nuts.
-I prepared an aperitif for us, she said; and offered him a martini glass with an olive stuck to the side. I tried to hide the fact that I don’t like olives by drinking very slowly. That way I was postponing the empty-glass-moment when the owner starts fiddling around nervously with it. I knew that it would look strange at that point not to eat the olive, so I avoided the situation all together. Amandine put a bowl of honey-brown pine-nuts in front of me, and told me “chin-chin”.
-This is the new trendy apero in Paris, she said. I didn’t know if she referred to the nuts or the drink, but I smiled politely. Her breasts looked enormous tonight compared to this afternoon, and I felt that she really wasn’t such a bad girl. She had slim, long legs and a long neck, which kind of made up for the lack of curves.

She served me “moules à la gruyere” and real "crab claws, served on a bed of citronella leaves and asparagus mousse”. It was really nice, and I enjoyed her company. When she laughed, she reminded me of a chimpanzee I had seen last night on TV. She was cute though, I realised. Her nose and ears were small, and her waist was slim. While she was telling me about the hidden areas in the world capital of romance, I got my nerves up and reached over to her neck and touched her.
-I think I’m finding the real Paris… I told her. She laughed nervously, but you could tell she was enjoying the attention. I lifted up her hand and kissed it lightly. She giggled.
-You’re a gentleman! Her English was surprisingly good, and she could keep up a conversation without too much difficulty. I wanted to kiss this real Parisian, but she was too involved in explaining about how she had prepared the raspberry flavoured crème brulée. I don’t eat desserts normally, but this was kind of good. And anyway, I didn’t want to upset her. I thought of the olive still left on the side of my Martini glass. Luckily her back was too it, so she could not possibly have seen it from her side of the table. I’m doing well, I thought to myself. I’m doing really well here in Paris.

* * *

After two bottles of Pinot Blanc, she told him that it was getting late. He played stupid, and told her how much he has enjoyed this first taste of beautiful Paris. She insisted politely that she had to work tomorrow, and forced him thus with gentle but firm female savoir-faire to get up from his comfortable seat in her sofa-bed. He knew it could be turned into a bed, because his parents had a similar looking one back in Mississauga.
-Will I see you again? He asked; searching for her eyes. I want to buy you dinner as thanks for tonight. It was awesome. I leave to London on Tuesday, so how about tomorrow?
She took longer than usual to answer, and the air was thick with crab fumes and lost dreams.
-That would be nice, Amandine said with a smile that was just about genuine. She knew this wasn’t the real thing, and that tomorrow she would have to return to her maigret de canard and sauce made with either strawberries or oranges – whichever was in season. They said bye and he walked into the early summer night, knowing that the humidity of the early summer night would instantly make his nose sweat. The Eiffel tower was ivory coloured in the sunset; prepared to be embraced by yet another long and lonely night.

Monica Westerén, 05.05.2008

Reading for Tuesday: Chekov

2008-05-05T13:00:00.000+02:00

The reading for Tuesday is a Chekov story: The Chorus girl

You can find it online here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=95105&pageno=2

Cheers,

Dottir

Welcome

2008-05-05T12:35:00.000+02:00

Welcome my nerds! I'm inviting you to post the stories you have already written! Here we can read each other's stories before and after our secret sessions, discuss them and comment on them. Enjoy, and looking forward to see you on Tuesday!