The window needed shutting: the rain was getting in. Autumn wetness drumming on the windows, drowning out the sound of Keith Jarrett breathing loudly as he played his black, polished Bechstein. The speakers whispered: “The rain, the rain, we will defeat it.”

But they couldn’t.

You were lying on the velvet green couch, meeting it with your simple silk ochre dress. More albums on the ground. Van Morrison, Bartok, Sigur Ros and some that were unfamiliar to me. You were ignoring them, just like you were ignoring the music and the rain; your eyes were on me. An unknown scent of aliveness came at me from all sides; from the books, from the glass chandelier, from the flowers on the table and from the windows the rain was trickling through.

Your legs were at an angle, trying but failing to reach the wooden floor. An inch separating your right foot and the ground. Your left further away. Your left hand on your belly, your right hand next to your body. Lean hands; small wrists; long fingers. Your shoulders rested against a cushion, your head was tilted back. Your golden hair was like a monotone rainbow.

The whole of you seemed to melt into the air around us.

It felt to me like perfect balance: the rattling rain, Jarrett’s playing, the shape of your body on the couch, the colours of your dress, the faded green velvet, the scent of aliveness.

The velvety structure of your eyes made me go deeper inside myself. There was no way I could reach out to that look. I had to meet it somewhere deeper. What does something that is being reborn every moment feel like?

I felt how everything that seems to be unique is connected to all other things as well. A code? It was more than a mathematical formula in which different letters suddenly form logic; there were holes in the formula, opening up to as yet unborn worlds about to unfold. Never-ending spring. Blossoming. I felt dazzled: too many shadows became forms, too many forms disappeared into the holes. I felt happy. I could have laughed hysterically. My soul appeared to have holes too: every single sound, every single colour, every single touch and every single taste was absorbed. I lived in everything, and everything lived in me.

+ more

The window needed shutting: the rain was getting in. Autumn wetness drumming on the windows, drowning out the sound of Keith Jarrett breathing loudly as he played his black, polished Bechstein. The speakers whispered: “The rain, the rain, we will defeat it.”

But they couldn’t.

You were lying on the velvet green couch, meeting it with your simple silk ochre dress. More albums on the ground. Van Morrison, Bartok, Sigur Ros and some that were unfamiliar to me. You were ignoring them, just like you were ignoring the music and the rain; your eyes were on me. An unknown scent of aliveness came at me from all sides; from the books, from the glass chandelier, from the flowers on the table and from the windows the rain was trickling through.

Your legs were at an angle, trying but failing to reach the wooden floor. An inch separating your right foot and the ground. Your left further away. Your left hand on your belly, your right hand next to your body. Lean hands; small wrists; long fingers. Your shoulders rested against a cushion, your head was tilted back. Your golden hair was like a monotone rainbow.

The whole of you seemed to melt into the air around us.

It felt to me like perfect balance: the rattling rain, Jarrett’s playing, the shape of your body on the couch, the colours of your dress, the faded green velvet, the scent of aliveness.

The velvety structure of your eyes made me go deeper inside myself. There was no way I could reach out to that look. I had to meet it somewhere deeper. What does something that is being reborn every moment feel like?

I felt how everything that seems to be unique is connected to all other things as well. A code? It was more than a mathematical formula in which different letters suddenly form logic; there were holes in the formula, opening up to as yet unborn worlds about to unfold. Never-ending spring. Blossoming. I felt dazzled: too many shadows became forms, too many forms disappeared into the holes. I felt happy. I could have laughed hysterically. My soul appeared to have holes too: every single sound, every single colour, every single touch and every single taste was absorbed. I lived in everything, and everything lived in me.

You stood up. You walked towards me. A fugue. Mathematics reformulated with every movement: new holes appearing. Other possibilities with every breath. You passed me. You disappeared. I could smell your scent. You were still there. I loved to lose you, knowing you can never leave.

The rain was still failing to defy gravity. How does an ever-falling leaf smell?

You came back with nothing but yourself. You were silent. You were a woman who does not need to speak to meet. I could have told you stories; I could have sang; I could have made you laugh. But all these things were just too much for what already was.

I wanted to become one with you and all other things. But the wanting wasn’t needed. I realised that everything in the world exists out of identical particles. You, me and the fresh flowers, just plucked from a nearby garden, now standing in a vase on the table – they are just different forms of the same, creating different harmonies. All one, all God-like, and all equal while different.

You stopped in front of me and granted me a look at all you were. Insolent. I looked shamelessly. In a soundless movement you bent your knees and embraced me. You wanted to overcome the illusion of distance. You wanted to break with the idea that something can be ‘too much.’

I felt silk, skin.

Warmth.

I felt grateful.

- less

He came in from the cold, his skin as thin as paper, his head covered with angel hair, arms and legs carried by the wind.

It was around five in the afternoon, exactly five weeks previously, on the fifth day of a cold month. The weak, low-hanging sun had spotted him first, following him all the way to the seat he took at a long oval table, not far from where I was warming my hands around a mug of hot chocolate, my fingers sticky from the cream. Seeing his face turned the chocolate cold. Frozen hands. You could see his veins, his muscles, his bones, his tissue, his structure; you could see what was inside him.

I stared into a face I knew so well that was simultaneously completely and utterly unknown to me. A face like my own.

He put the bag of colours he was carrying on the table. He stretched out a hand to me. It was weak and warm. Ants. I could feel his blood streaming. “How do you do?” A glass shattered into a thousand pieces. I could not let go of his hand; the ants building a bridge between his and mine. “Listen,” he said, the sound of a fallen glass hanging in the air behind us, still tangible. The moment the sound was gone, he asked: “Where did that sound go to?”

I started warming my hands again: sip of chocolate; cream in a two-day beard. I read some headlines that didn’t make sense, trying to regain my own space. His eyes were inside me, watching me from a position I could not occupy. I surrendered to his eyes.

He told me his life story, his words pale and crispy, coming without a hitch. His story was too long to fit one life; his experiences too diverse to fit one man; his adventures too grandiose to fit one time. Centuries passed like the watery reflection of a lantern in a black canal.

The moment he finished his story, he turned into a child and showed me the colours in his bag. There was no room in his excitement to ask questions. Dozens of leaves were spread out on the long, stained, wooden café table, forming a Matisse pattern. He giggled. His blood turned a deeper red. “They have all fallen, fallen softly to the ground.” He clustered the colours; red, orange and yellow dominated. He spoke to me through the colours of the leaves, telling me that he had had to return from the world the sound of the falling glass had gone to, and that his return had to do with solving one question. The colours were clear about that: paper man was a man with a quest.

+ more

He came in from the cold, his skin as thin as paper, his head covered with angel hair, arms and legs carried by the wind.

It was around five in the afternoon, exactly five weeks previously, on the fifth day of a cold month. The weak, low-hanging sun had spotted him first, following him all the way to the seat he took at a long oval table, not far from where I was warming my hands around a mug of hot chocolate, my fingers sticky from the cream. Seeing his face turned the chocolate cold. Frozen hands. You could see his veins, his muscles, his bones, his tissue, his structure; you could see what was inside him.

I stared into a face I knew so well that was simultaneously completely and utterly unknown to me. A face like my own.

He put the bag of colours he was carrying on the table. He stretched out a hand to me. It was weak and warm. Ants. I could feel his blood streaming. “How do you do?” A glass shattered into a thousand pieces. I could not let go of his hand; the ants building a bridge between his and mine. “Listen,” he said, the sound of a fallen glass hanging in the air behind us, still tangible. The moment the sound was gone, he asked: “Where did that sound go to?”

I started warming my hands again: sip of chocolate; cream in a two-day beard. I read some headlines that didn’t make sense, trying to regain my own space. His eyes were inside me, watching me from a position I could not occupy. I surrendered to his eyes.

He told me his life story, his words pale and crispy, coming without a hitch. His story was too long to fit one life; his experiences too diverse to fit one man; his adventures too grandiose to fit one time. Centuries passed like the watery reflection of a lantern in a black canal.

The moment he finished his story, he turned into a child and showed me the colours in his bag. There was no room in his excitement to ask questions. Dozens of leaves were spread out on the long, stained, wooden café table, forming a Matisse pattern. He giggled. His blood turned a deeper red. “They have all fallen, fallen softly to the ground.” He clustered the colours; red, orange and yellow dominated. He spoke to me through the colours of the leaves, telling me that he had had to return from the world the sound of the falling glass had gone to, and that his return had to do with solving one question. The colours were clear about that: paper man was a man with a quest.

During the weeks after our first encounter I visited my paper-skinned friend often. I joined him in the forest and saw him picking falling leaves from the air. I helped him group the leaves’ colours in his house. I saw him transform the fallen leaves into paper, feeding them into a big machine that made them come out as smooth as paper. He rolled the paper he’d made out of the dominant colours endlessly, creating an ever-growing expanse of paper. He cut the paper made of the minority colours into smaller and smaller pieces, the rhythm of his cutting a perfect legato.

One night we went to the forest. It was windy, snowflakes hanging in the air. The man spread out his arms to gather more and more of what was floating to the ground. The wind had blown the clouds to an unknown place. The sky was bright, the heavens dark; bright planets tried to shine their light on the mystery. But the light revealed nothing of that mystery.

“Did you know that the skies above us are actually not dark but have a sandy colour?” I did not know. “And did you know that when we shine our light onto a part of the universe, it widens itself, as if escaping?” I did not know that either. “The universe is breathing itself bigger and bigger, becoming wider and wider.”

In saying this, he had already answered the question that had brought him back to this world. But I could not tell him. I didn’t yet know what his question was: he had refused to tell me; it was a question he had to answer himself. Without help.

I enjoyed being with him. Although he was in search of something, his cutting and enlarging the paper leaves felt so peaceful. I saw things becoming bigger and I saw things becoming smaller. I saw things going in two directions at once. He used more and more advanced tools to cut the paper into smaller and smaller pieces. For days, the pieces he had been cutting had been invisible to my eyes. And the paper that had been getting bigger and bigger had exceeded my imagination for even longer.

I admired my-friend-in-search-of-something-he-could-not-grasp-but-who-at-the-same-time-believed-he-could. It takes a strong belief to believe in something you cannot grasp.

“What does God mean to you?” He was making pasta for the two of us, posing his question just a bit too carelessly. The blood I saw streaming in his face was boiling, just like the pasta. I could feel he was close to the answer he needed. And I knew that the question he had asked was a way of sharing his quest. We started talking. We arrived at a point where God could mean everything. Something that is unchangeable and includes all.

“But if things can become endlessly bigger and smaller, and God is all, God can become bigger and smaller too. God changes.” He wasn’t only speaking to me, but to himself as well. And the colours of the leaves gave the answer to his quest: God has Gods too. The One is many.

The pasta was perfect, al dente. The sauce simple yet tasty. I knew this was the last supper paper-man and I would enjoy together in this world.

- less

I haven’t seen him for quite some time, although our blood is the same and his hidden scars are no doubt to be found within me too. He drinks coffee; I drink tea, just a block away from where I live. He eats a chocolate cake, fast, as if he is afraid to really taste what he eats. Fastness, there has always been this fastness with him: no time to tune our hearts, ever. Now that he’s becoming older, fastness manifest itself as unease.

He has his black leather jacket on, zipped, ready to leave any minute, although another coffee is on its way. I watch his lips turning dark brown, and take a sip of my tea; salty-tasting water. He dyes his hair dark ever since a few of them turned grey, covering the aging that would actually suit him so well. Although I’m watching his lips, I suddenly see that he is dressed completely in black. I can barely remember him in colours. And with that vague memory, the past suddenly arrives as a hole between us, our conversation disappearing into its nothingness. No words left to say ‘after’. Our jaws are muddy, having difficulties digesting the past.

He is dying of something that he had hoped to live longer. My mind is full of anger, screaming ‘how could you ever’.

I turned what I loved into light again

And God wrote in the air about love first, death

His kitchen full of white

The sea so blue

Impossible to know where it all begins

He looks at me and talks through a mouth full of chocolate. And although his tongue speaks words that disappear before they reach my ears, I hear his voice reaching out to me, trying to tell me what my heart already knows: that he couldn’t have done it differently. His voice and my knowing, holds me fast.

When the world screams for peace, there can still be war

Between ‘then’ and now it is dark

And for it to become bright

The world that we hold between us, needs to leak

Its anger and tears

For years I have wanted to really meet him; confused by the idea that there was something in him still to be discovered, that somewhere deep in his heart there could be something more true than what I had encountered. But this is all what he is, and all what I am: this ‘thisness’, right now. The search for someone different made the hole bigger. And this thisness is much more than my ideas of him.

“When are you going to marry?” he asks me, chocolate still covering his lips. I am surprised. It is such a sweet question. “I would love to see you get married to her.” + more

I haven’t seen him for quite some time, although our blood is the same and his hidden scars are no doubt to be found within me too. He drinks coffee; I drink tea, just a block away from where I live. He eats a chocolate cake, fast, as if he is afraid to really taste what he eats. Fastness, there has always been this fastness with him: no time to tune our hearts, ever. Now that he’s becoming older, fastness manifest itself as unease.

He has his black leather jacket on, zipped, ready to leave any minute, although another coffee is on its way. I watch his lips turning dark brown, and take a sip of my tea; salty-tasting water. He dyes his hair dark ever since a few of them turned grey, covering the aging that would actually suit him so well. Although I’m watching his lips, I suddenly see that he is dressed completely in black. I can barely remember him in colours. And with that vague memory, the past suddenly arrives as a hole between us, our conversation disappearing into its nothingness. No words left to say ‘after’. Our jaws are muddy, having difficulties digesting the past.

He is dying of something that he had hoped to live longer. My mind is full of anger, screaming ‘how could you ever’.

I turned what I loved into light again

And God wrote in the air about love first, death

His kitchen full of white

The sea so blue

Impossible to know where it all begins

He looks at me and talks through a mouth full of chocolate. And although his tongue speaks words that disappear before they reach my ears, I hear his voice reaching out to me, trying to tell me what my heart already knows: that he couldn’t have done it differently. His voice and my knowing, holds me fast.

When the world screams for peace, there can still be war

Between ‘then’ and now it is dark

And for it to become bright

The world that we hold between us, needs to leak

Its anger and tears

For years I have wanted to really meet him; confused by the idea that there was something in him still to be discovered, that somewhere deep in his heart there could be something more true than what I had encountered. But this is all what he is, and all what I am: this ‘thisness’, right now. The search for someone different made the hole bigger. And this thisness is much more than my ideas of him.

“When are you going to marry?” he asks me, chocolate still covering his lips. I am surprised. It is such a sweet question. “I would love to see you get married to her.”

His words are the most old fashioned he ever spoke, the sounds the most lovely he ever gave me. I hold my breath and feel how he thaws something I was not aware of.

Someone once told me that in ancient China parents helped their kids to build a house once the parents thought the kid was ready to live its own life, no matter what age. Helping to build a house was a way of imparting self-belief: this life is your life to be lived.

He is a fragment of a circle

I left to pick an apple from the tree

On my way I found

A snake

It bit me and I screamed

The circle round

- less

We drive away in the early evening, just at that moment when darkness suddenly descends, and trees shift from producing oxygen to producing carbon. Quite a long drive through the woods; not really a road, just layers of broken branches, crushed leaves and dried mud. The outside air slips through the window, bringing the nearby sea into the car.

The driver asks the usual questions I have become accustomed to over the last month: Where are you from? How long have you been here? Where are you going? For the people who live here, the questions are a way to get an idea of who you are. I answer quite fully. And I ask him about the candles I can see outside. “People meditating, using candles to keep away the bad spirits hidden in the trees.” Trees are important. I have seen trees with leaves that tell your future; I have seen trees with little dead babies wrapped in cloth hung on thick branches like exotic fruits; I have seen little black trees, home for thousands of bats, trees that look death and naked at night.

The longer we drive the more silent it becomes. The driver keeps asking questions, but it is as if the darkness takes away his words. It becomes more and more difficult to understand him. He loses words, blanks develop, and soon he’s little more than a moving mouth creating soft waves of air. Weeks ago, I met a friend of a nephew of the driver. He told me that if I should visit this area, I had to contact him. He wanted to bring me in contact with a “man with powers”. And that is about to happen.

The car stops. The house has no roof, just walls made of white stone. Naked walls, apart from a poster of a Buddha with the head of a bald, smiling baby. Stars and moon seem to be within reaching distance, like low hanging fruit.

The couch is covered with plastic. I sit down, sparking a sound that lasts longer than the action of sitting itself. I am offered a cookie: two layers of cake with a soft pink filling. My teeth are dancing. He wears a sarong – quite colourful, purple and gold – and a simple white shirt. His belly is big, yet he is quite tall and slim. His eyes are dark with the expression of a young boy: naughty, excited, sparkling. He doesn’t say a word; he communicates by laughing. He pours tea and looks at me, laughing. He shows me the box of cookies again, and laughs. I do not dare to refuse, my teeth offered another bite. Long moments of silence don’t seem to feel odd to him.

+ more

We drive away in the early evening, just at that moment when darkness suddenly descends, and trees shift from producing oxygen to producing carbon. Quite a long drive through the woods; not really a road, just layers of broken branches, crushed leaves and dried mud. The outside air slips through the window, bringing the nearby sea into the car.

The driver asks the usual questions I have become accustomed to over the last month: Where are you from? How long have you been here? Where are you going? For the people who live here, the questions are a way to get an idea of who you are. I answer quite fully. And I ask him about the candles I can see outside. “People meditating, using candles to keep away the bad spirits hidden in the trees.” Trees are important. I have seen trees with leaves that tell your future; I have seen trees with little dead babies wrapped in cloth hung on thick branches like exotic fruits; I have seen little black trees, home for thousands of bats, trees that look death and naked at night.

The longer we drive the more silent it becomes. The driver keeps asking questions, but it is as if the darkness takes away his words. It becomes more and more difficult to understand him. He loses words, blanks develop, and soon he’s little more than a moving mouth creating soft waves of air. Weeks ago, I met a friend of a nephew of the driver. He told me that if I should visit this area, I had to contact him. He wanted to bring me in contact with a “man with powers”. And that is about to happen.

The car stops. The house has no roof, just walls made of white stone. Naked walls, apart from a poster of a Buddha with the head of a bald, smiling baby. Stars and moon seem to be within reaching distance, like low hanging fruit.

The couch is covered with plastic. I sit down, sparking a sound that lasts longer than the action of sitting itself. I am offered a cookie: two layers of cake with a soft pink filling. My teeth are dancing. He wears a sarong – quite colourful, purple and gold – and a simple white shirt. His belly is big, yet he is quite tall and slim. His eyes are dark with the expression of a young boy: naughty, excited, sparkling. He doesn’t say a word; he communicates by laughing. He pours tea and looks at me, laughing. He shows me the box of cookies again, and laughs. I do not dare to refuse, my teeth offered another bite. Long moments of silence don’t seem to feel odd to him.

Suddenly he goes to another room and comes back with what was once a green hairbrush. He shows me how to use a knife, and how to defend against a knife attack. His body is low to the ground, feet moving quickly; he maintains a perfect balance despite fast-changing positions. He holds the hairbrush in one hand and his other hand close, ready to create extra power or to defend a counterattack.

He puts away the hairbrush and asks me to come to him, laughing and waving with his hand, just like a young kid who wants his friends to join him, yet is too shy to ask. “He wants you to come to him.” My driver seems to have found his words again, spoiling the moment; he has joined us silently, sitting in a dark corner of the room. “He will check and heal your body, if you want.”

I walk up to the man, leaving a few inches between us. He has his eyes closed and he asks me to do the same, striking his covered left eye while smiling. Although my eyes are closed, I see his hand following the shape of my body, sometimes freezing; he is feeling the warmth and energy of my organs, his hands sensitive scanners. He grabs my hand with both of his; I feel a strong energy invading me. He whispers sounds and blows on top of my head. Silence. He hits my shoulder softly; I open my eyes. He writes something in the air with his finger, close to my heart. He nods his head and looks into my eyes. Liberation is starring into my face. I fly.

Now I know that I know how Jesus could walk on water.

“The words he wrote will protect you,” the driver says. “If, for example, someone wants to hurt you with knife, the knife cannot touch you.” It all feels very reassuring. The ‘man with powers’, laughing face and big belly, needs to go. “There is a Muslim celebration in a place two hours’ drive from where we are,” my driver says, explaining the sudden hurry. I am a bit confused. “Is he a Muslim?” I ask. “Yes, in this part many Muslims live. They come from Java, which is just an hour by boot from here.” ‘Man with powers’ asks my driver what we are talking about. Then he speaks to me, a couple of words, then laughs and leaves. My driver wants to translate, but ‘man with powers’ has planted his words directly into my system: What appears to be two and different must be one.

- less

He says he has conquered thirteen thousand feathered animals. His words are like birds. I cannot really catch them.

“She is falling. Softly. She loves me. But something says she does not.”

I believe him; I believe that he has fought thirteen thousand feathered animals.

He’s not wearing any shoes. His big toe is thick and blue, as is his ankle. Little scratches here and there. His sweater and trousers are dirty. His face decorated with small scars, from fighting. And feathers in his hair. I envision thirteen thousand feathered animals in a battle with this bare-footed man.

“I had to escape you know; they were after me.”

He sees my questions building, but pretends not to. Salty air hangs in the street.

“If she really asks me to go, I will leave. And I will never come back begging for her love. But she does not tell me to leave. Instead she sends me fighting feathered animals. Look.”

His blond hair is reaching out to the sky. He conjures without hands; a high black hat is lifted from his head, a hat that was not there a second ago; a bird escapes. Not the white pigeon one would expect - just a bird; grey, small and with a funny beak. Not long ago I had dinner with this man. I know him for quite a while. This man is a professional in his discipline, and well respected too.

“When you don’t wear shoes everybody thinks you’re a homeless person. One guy gave me some money, but I have enough of that. I want nothing but her love. For the first time I feel ground.” He stamps his foot.

“Now I understand why God asked Moses to take off his shoes, since he was on Holy Ground. This is Holy Ground.” He stamps again. “And it has never been different.”

His voice becomes stronger.

People walking past are staring at us. Among them are people that I recognise and who I am sure also recognise him. I see them thinking: Has this man gone crazy?

“How many times have I been killed the last seventy-two hours in the chambers of love’s desire? How many times?” He raises his hands heroically. Every second I expect the scenery to collapse. And for the audience to applaud. But he’s not playing a role; I have never seen his eyes so deep and bright.

“I am not a crazy man.” He is clear, he reads minds. “I am hyper. Yes. So, I might look like a crazy man. But that is because all the craziness of the past decades has hit the surface of my system. What have I been doing? First working my butt off to gain more knowledge. But what have I learned? And what has work done for me but enable me to buy something I thought I needed. There was no time for love. There was time for girlfriends, and all that stuff - but no time for love.” + more

He says he has conquered thirteen thousand feathered animals. His words are like birds. I cannot really catch them.

“She is falling. Softly. She loves me. But something says she does not.”

I believe him; I believe that he has fought thirteen thousand feathered animals.

He’s not wearing any shoes. His big toe is thick and blue, as is his ankle. Little scratches here and there. His sweater and trousers are dirty. His face decorated with small scars, from fighting. And feathers in his hair. I envision thirteen thousand feathered animals in a battle with this bare-footed man.

“I had to escape you know; they were after me.”

He sees my questions building, but pretends not to. Salty air hangs in the street.

“If she really asks me to go, I will leave. And I will never come back begging for her love. But she does not tell me to leave. Instead she sends me fighting feathered animals. Look.”

His blond hair is reaching out to the sky. He conjures without hands; a high black hat is lifted from his head, a hat that was not there a second ago; a bird escapes. Not the white pigeon one would expect - just a bird; grey, small and with a funny beak. Not long ago I had dinner with this man. I know him for quite a while. This man is a professional in his discipline, and well respected too.

“When you don’t wear shoes everybody thinks you’re a homeless person. One guy gave me some money, but I have enough of that. I want nothing but her love. For the first time I feel ground.” He stamps his foot.

“Now I understand why God asked Moses to take off his shoes, since he was on Holy Ground. This is Holy Ground.” He stamps again. “And it has never been different.”

His voice becomes stronger.

People walking past are staring at us. Among them are people that I recognise and who I am sure also recognise him. I see them thinking: Has this man gone crazy?

“How many times have I been killed the last seventy-two hours in the chambers of love’s desire? How many times?” He raises his hands heroically. Every second I expect the scenery to collapse. And for the audience to applaud. But he’s not playing a role; I have never seen his eyes so deep and bright.

“I am not a crazy man.” He is clear, he reads minds. “I am hyper. Yes. So, I might look like a crazy man. But that is because all the craziness of the past decades has hit the surface of my system. What have I been doing? First working my butt off to gain more knowledge. But what have I learned? And what has work done for me but enable me to buy something I thought I needed. There was no time for love. There was time for girlfriends, and all that stuff - but no time for love.”

A man has stopped quite close to us, listening. He’s behaving casually in the hope we won’t notice him: he’s picking his nose. And actually, what he is doing isn’t entirely fake.

“I have had my doubts the last few days. Can I allow love to tear me apart? But then I thought: how can I believe my own doubt? And what is it that is actually doubting? It’s that which thinks that is in control that is doubting. But are we ever in control? Isn’t that the main cause of confusion? That we think that we are someone who can be in control of something? Isn’t that what is causing pain? Look.”

He rolls up a sleeve of his light blue shirt to reveal his right arm. His veins are visible, as if they are on the surface of his skin.

“Look carefully.” I can see his blood streaming. It is streaming with joy.

“Have I anything to say about this blood streaming through my body? All I can do is to make myself available for life to run through me.”

A short silence descends while we stare at life streaming. I wonder whether I should say or ask something, or just celebrate this rare moment of peace.

He breaks the silence and bends. “Watch out.” I copy his movement instantly. Thousands of feathered animals are filling the streets.

The salty air becomes stronger. Then he suddenly rises, spreads his arms and begins to speak: “I open my terrors to you. Let the mountains rejoice, my love. I have come deep into your arms. I have become endlessness in those arms. Let the wings of these animals destroy every corner of me. Let me fall softly, deeper into you, becoming you. Let my image die into you.”

He speaks beautifully, like an actor in a Shakespeare play. The animals disappear. The audience applauds. I see a man no more, but love.

- less

There were grass and trees on both sides of the railway, with stones between the railway and the greenery – a kind of a path but never meant to be used that way. I rode my bike twice alongside the tracks to go back and forth from my house to school. Both times during breaks. It was a dangerous route, but the shortest and the only possible means to be back in time for when school began again. One day someone came out of the bushes. He looked like a farmer. He had an axe in his hand and was shouting at me in a language I couldn’t understand. He came after me, axe in the air. I peddled as hard as I could but the stones stopped me getting my speed up. His shouting grew louder and I raised my left arm to the heavens in surrender. But when I looked over my shoulder, there was no one to be seen anymore. I still heard his voice, the language still feeling unfamiliar.

During the four years that I rode that route, I quite often heard bells ringing, announcing that a train would come along in just a few seconds. Somewhere, not far from me, barriers would come down to stop the traffic. I had to hide myself in the bushes, but I must have been visible to the train driver. A loud whistle blew me away. The draft caused by the speed of the train was so strong that I had to dig my feet into the mud.

Via this route it took me twenty minutes to get home and twenty minutes to get back to school and lock my bike just before the bell rang to summon the kids back to class. I really never became friends with the other kids, because I never had time to actually meet and play with them.

It didn’t matter if it rained, or snowed, I needed to go home during breaks for that one moment: when I knocked on the window of our house, I saw my mother looking surprised to see me (but I knew she was acting); we waved, she blew me a kiss, I laughed and felt light, and I rode back to school. When I got home from school for the day, we never talked about my short appearances in front of the window. And she never asked me not to come home during breaks; she knew those visits made going to school possible for me. I needed to see her as much as I could, as if every moment with her was precious.

"I always thought of myself as a gypsy boy. But since she was my mother, I could never be too far away from home."

“How much older was she than you are now,” he asks.

“Two years.”

+ more

There were grass and trees on both sides of the railway, with stones between the railway and the greenery – a kind of a path but never meant to be used that way. I rode my bike twice alongside the tracks to go back and forth from my house to school. Both times during breaks. It was a dangerous route, but the shortest and the only possible means to be back in time for when school began again. One day someone came out of the bushes. He looked like a farmer. He had an axe in his hand and was shouting at me in a language I couldn’t understand. He came after me, axe in the air. I peddled as hard as I could but the stones stopped me getting my speed up. His shouting grew louder and I raised my left arm to the heavens in surrender. But when I looked over my shoulder, there was no one to be seen anymore. I still heard his voice, the language still feeling unfamiliar.

During the four years that I rode that route, I quite often heard bells ringing, announcing that a train would come along in just a few seconds. Somewhere, not far from me, barriers would come down to stop the traffic. I had to hide myself in the bushes, but I must have been visible to the train driver. A loud whistle blew me away. The draft caused by the speed of the train was so strong that I had to dig my feet into the mud.

Via this route it took me twenty minutes to get home and twenty minutes to get back to school and lock my bike just before the bell rang to summon the kids back to class. I really never became friends with the other kids, because I never had time to actually meet and play with them.

It didn’t matter if it rained, or snowed, I needed to go home during breaks for that one moment: when I knocked on the window of our house, I saw my mother looking surprised to see me (but I knew she was acting); we waved, she blew me a kiss, I laughed and felt light, and I rode back to school. When I got home from school for the day, we never talked about my short appearances in front of the window. And she never asked me not to come home during breaks; she knew those visits made going to school possible for me. I needed to see her as much as I could, as if every moment with her was precious.

"I always thought of myself as a gypsy boy. But since she was my mother, I could never be too far away from home."

“How much older was she than you are now,” he asks.

“Two years.”

It feels as if my body has not been my house for so long. I long to be in it.

“Experience this,” he says. And without explaining what ‘this’ is, ‘this’ starts to take over my body. It is shaking, it is sweating, it is hurting, it is suffocating.

It is said that Jesus cried when the nails went through his body. He experienced the pain. What is the cost of experiencing fully? Losing one’s body?

“Is it my body that is shouting?” I ask him.

“You know it is not your body, else you wouldn’t ask. It is a hidden promise within your body. It is your body becoming conscious of that hidden promise that does not belong in your body. It is your body relaxing to create an exit for the hidden promise. It is the hidden promise that does not want to leave because you have not become fully acquainted with it yet. Look the hidden promise in its eyes. See what it is.”

I try to see. Its face is black like everything else. Something inside me is eating me like a lion. And it is roaring inside me.

I was waiting for her outside when she came home from her first appointment with the doctor. She walked gracefully. I fainted. Blackness.

Through the blackness it becomes slowly visible, this hidden promise.

“Stay with it,” he says softly. “The darkness will also reveal its light in the end. And it will have a brightness in which every darkness can arise.”

I see it through the darkness, the hidden promise. It has no name. It wants to prevent me from seeing that there is no need coming home to her.

“Allow yourself to live beyond every border," I hear him saying. His lips do not move.

The light, you know, it turns the darkeness into such a sweetness.

- less

He was riding a tiger, snake in his right hand biting it every few moments to spur on the once wild animal. To remind him of his true nature: to run like a beast. If someone had seen him riding a tiger while holding a snake, no doubt they would have applauded him, cheered him. What man could tame the strength of a tiger? What man could hold a reptile whose body is so hard to grab?

He was heading for the world, not far from where he had made his home; heading for a cliff just over the hill. The gap between the place he lived and the world was no more than ten feet wide. It was the shortest route to the world, or at least he believed so, since he had not taken another route. It seemed possible there was another route, but that seemed less well defined, less convenient. Probably.

He had spent more than thirty years out in the world. But ever since he had seen the light and felt that all that is made of light is also made to disappear, he had lost interest. Why love something that is just a shallow projection of the divine? He had lived in isolation for years, away from the world. In a dark place. But safe. A place he ruled. And because he had learned to see light in everything, and gained the wisdom sages have spoken of for centuries, the darkness did not bother him. Over the years some cats, probably sick and tired of the world too, had visited him. Somehow found their way to his place. Only one cat seemed immune to the cans and stones he threw at them. Every time he shouted at it or tried to hit it, the cat leaned over, stretching its neck towards him, like some cats do when you stroke them.

The wind was mild, the night advanced, the darkness blue and the stars yellow. In his mind he started a conversation. He picked up his binoculars, a pen and a notebook, his eyes casting light onto the paper. He watched, and wrote what he saw in the margins. The images entered his mind, which was trained to reflect on them. Somehow, he hated himself for being here. Why did he long to watch, knowing that what he sees is worthless? His mind always had a good answer. He was here to remind himself that all that is made of light shines grey. His notes were almost mathematical. Sometimes, at the end of a visit, back home, he tried to combine everything he had written into a mathematical formula whose outcome was ridiculous, exactly the outcome he was seeking.

That night he saw a man in an office, a lit-up box in a tall skyscraper. The man was wearing a suit, sporting a tie. Nobody left to impress but himself. He saw a young couple making love in ridiculous poses that he tried to reproduce with geometrical forms. He saw an old man in front of a TV set, watching coloured forms that drugged him. He saw a woman, probably having trouble sleeping, water plants and flowers. He saw much more but felt nothing, his mind working overtime.

+ more

He was riding a tiger, snake in his right hand biting it every few moments to spur on the once wild animal. To remind him of his true nature: to run like a beast. If someone had seen him riding a tiger while holding a snake, no doubt they would have applauded him, cheered him. What man could tame the strength of a tiger? What man could hold a reptile whose body is so hard to grab?

He was heading for the world, not far from where he had made his home; heading for a cliff just over the hill. The gap between the place he lived and the world was no more than ten feet wide. It was the shortest route to the world, or at least he believed so, since he had not taken another route. It seemed possible there was another route, but that seemed less well defined, less convenient. Probably.

He had spent more than thirty years out in the world. But ever since he had seen the light and felt that all that is made of light is also made to disappear, he had lost interest. Why love something that is just a shallow projection of the divine? He had lived in isolation for years, away from the world. In a dark place. But safe. A place he ruled. And because he had learned to see light in everything, and gained the wisdom sages have spoken of for centuries, the darkness did not bother him. Over the years some cats, probably sick and tired of the world too, had visited him. Somehow found their way to his place. Only one cat seemed immune to the cans and stones he threw at them. Every time he shouted at it or tried to hit it, the cat leaned over, stretching its neck towards him, like some cats do when you stroke them.

The wind was mild, the night advanced, the darkness blue and the stars yellow. In his mind he started a conversation. He picked up his binoculars, a pen and a notebook, his eyes casting light onto the paper. He watched, and wrote what he saw in the margins. The images entered his mind, which was trained to reflect on them. Somehow, he hated himself for being here. Why did he long to watch, knowing that what he sees is worthless? His mind always had a good answer. He was here to remind himself that all that is made of light shines grey. His notes were almost mathematical. Sometimes, at the end of a visit, back home, he tried to combine everything he had written into a mathematical formula whose outcome was ridiculous, exactly the outcome he was seeking.

That night he saw a man in an office, a lit-up box in a tall skyscraper. The man was wearing a suit, sporting a tie. Nobody left to impress but himself. He saw a young couple making love in ridiculous poses that he tried to reproduce with geometrical forms. He saw an old man in front of a TV set, watching coloured forms that drugged him. He saw a woman, probably having trouble sleeping, water plants and flowers. He saw much more but felt nothing, his mind working overtime.

Back home he examined his notes. His mind was trying to find the centre of the babushka doll: somehow, he thought his thinking would not only lead to the revelation of light, but to the source of it as well.

The cat reappeared. He threw his pen. Missed. The cat came closer, stretching its neck, wanting to be stroked. He hesitated then gave in. But instead of fur he felt only bones. It made him think of the cat’s physiology.

The cat was willing to be caressed. To the cat, the hand’s man felt like the hand of a loved one, despite the lack of feeling in it. Suddenly, in less than a fraction of a second, the cat grabbed the notebook with its mouth and ran. A few seconds later the man was back on his tiger, spurring it on to kill its animal cousin. This time the snake wasn’t biting the tiger but biting the air, its body arched forward, ready to paralyze the cat that was only just ahead.

The cat took the path not taken. Bumpy, cold, lots of wind and barely able to see ahead. Swampy. The cat disappeared in the mist. The only reason the man could see where the cat had gone was because of the paper from the notebook. Somehow the cat was not only running, it was also chewing up the man’s written thoughts. Seeing the pieces of paper spread around turned the man’s mind cloudy; his thinking came slowly to a stop, as if not only the notebook was being ripped apart, but his thought processes too. Pieces of thought evaporating until his thinking appeared to have disappeared. Actually, though, his thinking was becoming clearer: grasping that the thinking used to analyze isn’t as clear as the mind wants us to believe.

Although the cat was gone, and although there wasn’t any paper left to follow, he felt the cat intensely. At that moment he fell off his tiger, hit some stones and rolled from the mountain. Minutes passed. The contours of the ground launched him into the air. He came down on new ground. Earth.

Throughout the process of falling he had felt the cat’s fur – saw it leaning towards him despite his unwillingness to love it – and heard the cat’s sounds forming words: “How can there be a limit to love.”

Earth felt soft. He felt, and felt that what he felt was as bright as life can get.

- less

“No, that’s nothing; no need to worry about that.” Five seconds and a fear that had stayed with me for years, vanishes. Just like that. I am already lifting myself out of the chair when he says: “You are trying to love this, aren’t you.” On ‘this’ he spreads his arms, and I think I see a twinkle in his eyes.

Now fear has left me, my system is more open to really looking at this doctor, this doctor with the practice deep in the woods. And he looks funny. Early fifties, grey hair, glasses, white coat, of course, jeans, sneakers – also white, with three white stripes, barely noticeable. Actually, he looks a bit like Dustin Hoffman.

“So, what I notice is that there is a certain resistance in your system, making it hard for you to be fully open to this moment. Is that right?” He is leaning backwards. He is enjoying this more than the investigation of some small bumbs on my head, a few seconds ago.

“Listen.” Bird sounds.

“Feel,” he says, striking his cheek and pointing his head in my direction, encouraging me to do the same. I feel a bit embarrassed.

“What is it that prevents you from being fully open to this moment? This is all we have. Now – this moment – isn’t it?” Without waiting for me to answer he grabs a paper and a pen and gives them to me.

“I will ask ‘it’, and also for you to come up with something that will support you in becoming fully available.” He puts his hands behind his head, letting it rest in them. “Please write down...”

His breathing becomes louder. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth, but nothing comes, not yet. A few seconds later: “Love and happiness are what the world will give to me...” He is breathing loudly through his nose and takes a little pause, “…I am part of all that is happening, every moment. What could please me more than to receive love in the deepest of my being. Everything is so easy, and the reason why is not important.” He stops. Opens his eyes and meets mine. I put down my pen. Unexpectedly, his mouth issues more words. “What a pleasure it will be to allow love to ground me, to form the basis of my being.”

He asks me to repeat what he has just said. I do. Quite fast, feeling a bit strange.

“Again please.” I do. Then: “Could you do it one more time, but take your time for the words to blossom in you.” In the slowness of repeating I feel the words finding their way into my body.

“I know this is quite unusual. You go to a doctor, and well...” He lifts his arms and opens his hands. “For thirty years I have been a doctor: what most doctors do does not help one bit to make you become more fully alive.” He gets out of his chair and walks a bit. His office is quite big. “Are you okay with this?”

I am. + more

“No, that’s nothing; no need to worry about that.” Five seconds and a fear that had stayed with me for years, vanishes. Just like that. I am already lifting myself out of the chair when he says: “You are trying to love this, aren’t you.” On ‘this’ he spreads his arms, and I think I see a twinkle in his eyes.

Now fear has left me, my system is more open to really looking at this doctor, this doctor with the practice deep in the woods. And he looks funny. Early fifties, grey hair, glasses, white coat, of course, jeans, sneakers – also white, with three white stripes, barely noticeable. Actually, he looks a bit like Dustin Hoffman.

“So, what I notice is that there is a certain resistance in your system, making it hard for you to be fully open to this moment. Is that right?” He is leaning backwards. He is enjoying this more than the investigation of some small bumbs on my head, a few seconds ago.

“Listen.” Bird sounds.

“Feel,” he says, striking his cheek and pointing his head in my direction, encouraging me to do the same. I feel a bit embarrassed.

“What is it that prevents you from being fully open to this moment? This is all we have. Now – this moment – isn’t it?” Without waiting for me to answer he grabs a paper and a pen and gives them to me.

“I will ask ‘it’, and also for you to come up with something that will support you in becoming fully available.” He puts his hands behind his head, letting it rest in them. “Please write down...”

His breathing becomes louder. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth, but nothing comes, not yet. A few seconds later: “Love and happiness are what the world will give to me...” He is breathing loudly through his nose and takes a little pause, “…I am part of all that is happening, every moment. What could please me more than to receive love in the deepest of my being. Everything is so easy, and the reason why is not important.” He stops. Opens his eyes and meets mine. I put down my pen. Unexpectedly, his mouth issues more words. “What a pleasure it will be to allow love to ground me, to form the basis of my being.”

He asks me to repeat what he has just said. I do. Quite fast, feeling a bit strange.

“Again please.” I do. Then: “Could you do it one more time, but take your time for the words to blossom in you.” In the slowness of repeating I feel the words finding their way into my body.

“I know this is quite unusual. You go to a doctor, and well...” He lifts his arms and opens his hands. “For thirty years I have been a doctor: what most doctors do does not help one bit to make you become more fully alive.” He gets out of his chair and walks a bit. His office is quite big. “Are you okay with this?”

I am.

“Look, we can investigate what it is that is bugging you. We can also ask this great intelligence (lifting his arms again, opening them to receive) to show it to us.”

He closes the office curtains. Some workers have arrived to fix something and can see in. “I don’t like people watching me when I’m doing this,” he says, moving to the middle of the room.

“I will ask this intelligence, or love, or consciousness, or whatever we want to call it, to show, through me, who you think you are at this moment. After that I can ask it to show, through me, who you really are. Let’s see if there is a difference.” He takes off his white coat, revealing a blue polo shirt. A man on a horse. He concentrates. His body begins to change. He starts walking with his chin slightly tilted, chest pushed out. All in slow motion. He raises his arms and puts them in front of his chest, his hands becoming claws. His feet move heavily, stickily. He walks for two, maybe three minutes, doing circles in his office. Changes in his posture, but not significantly different. I am watching myself in a mirror. He breaths out, heavenly, and lets me out of him.

“Okay.” One word to close session one.

He walks to the centre of his office and closes his eyes. He makes contact again. For a few seconds, nothing. Then, he bursts out in a laugh.

“This is funny, this is so funny. Look.” He begins to pace again. He touches his heart with his right hand and then makes a movement with it as if sowing seed. He doesn’t stop giggling. His acting out of ‘me’ goes on for minutes, encompassing different movements and poses. I cannot help but burst into laughter too. It doesn’t disturb him. He keeps on acting me, and my systems recognize what it is that wants to show itself.

A few minutes later I am standing at the door. We shake hands. They feel good: his and mine, both hands.

- less

Tired barn, leaning backwards, some planks missing / an old farm, feeding cows, my job since I didn’t want to go on a school trip. A mountain, creamy cloud on the top, vanilla / first clouds seen from above, viewed from an airplane window. Moose, at least a dozen, walking on water, religiously / skating on a ditch behind the house, drinking hot chocolate after making a quick circuit. Two men cutting down a tree, the tree turning to wood that will soon go up in fire / a body, suddenly lighter than a second ago. A woman walking with two dogs, ten traces in the snow / my aunt carrying bags of groceries, on her way to make food for us.

In my head I hear the clicking sound of a camera. And just as a digital camera can show pictures taken earlier, my mind projects pictures from long ago, from someone I no longer am, randomly alluding to the pictures I see now.

The train stops. People grab suitcases and climb into coats. Thick coats. Outside, people are waiting, sitting on suitcases or standing next to them, ready to leave for home.

“Scotty.” A woman’s voice. She’s calling to a little boy dressed in red ski pants and a red coat, the latter still unzipped. They don’t match, the coat and the pants; the reds are different. Underneath the coat he has a fleece jacket. He wears glasses. Quite thick ones, turning his eyes into eggs. His hair is white. He is little and probably small for his age. “You’ll catch a cold.” Not a worried voice, an irritated one. Scotty seems to be too excited. His right hand grasps his skis; his grip is strong. He holds a mountain. With his left foot he plays with the snow, plunging it into the white, pulling it out, showing the snow to the sun. After a few seconds the snow starts to melt, dripping on the ground, more yellow now, like porridge. Snow doesn’t like to be described; it wants to be felt.

“Zip it!” An order now. Snow falls, softly, tenderly. Scotty doesn’t hear the voice. He’s seeing himself going down the slopes. His hips make similar movements to those he made moments ago, up the hill. He is sealing his memory. “Scotty.” A man’s voice now. “Do you want to go skiing next year? Then zip your coat.”

The boy tries to zip his coat but doesn’t know where to put his skies. His legs are like rubber bands. The man’s voice continues, blind to Scotty’s efforts: “Shall I smack you?” The words are too far away for Scotty to recognise. The man looks strong. A sportsman? His hair is white, too; cut short. His face is a map of still-to-be-lived sadness. His coat’s zipped.

Scotty sees himself in the future, when he’s become ‘Scott.’ He sees that his father is visiting him and that he leaves his coat on, zipped up. Scotty decides that if the vision comes true, he won’t ask his father to undo his jacket.

Scotty is almost losing his balance trying to do the zip thing. Only his skis hold him in place. A few seconds later he snatches something from his trouser pocket. A stone he’s grabbed, secretly. Where would he have found it? Has he had it for a long time or is it a recent find? It seems to feel familiar to him. But familiarity doesn’t say anything about time. Some things feel instantly familiar.

+ more

Tired barn, leaning backwards, some planks missing / an old farm, feeding cows, my job since I didn’t want to go on a school trip. A mountain, creamy cloud on the top, vanilla / first clouds seen from above, viewed from an airplane window. Moose, at least a dozen, walking on water, religiously / skating on a ditch behind the house, drinking hot chocolate after making a quick circuit. Two men cutting down a tree, the tree turning to wood that will soon go up in fire / a body, suddenly lighter than a second ago. A woman walking with two dogs, ten traces in the snow / my aunt carrying bags of groceries, on her way to make food for us.

In my head I hear the clicking sound of a camera. And just as a digital camera can show pictures taken earlier, my mind projects pictures from long ago, from someone I no longer am, randomly alluding to the pictures I see now.

The train stops. People grab suitcases and climb into coats. Thick coats. Outside, people are waiting, sitting on suitcases or standing next to them, ready to leave for home.

“Scotty.” A woman’s voice. She’s calling to a little boy dressed in red ski pants and a red coat, the latter still unzipped. They don’t match, the coat and the pants; the reds are different. Underneath the coat he has a fleece jacket. He wears glasses. Quite thick ones, turning his eyes into eggs. His hair is white. He is little and probably small for his age. “You’ll catch a cold.” Not a worried voice, an irritated one. Scotty seems to be too excited. His right hand grasps his skis; his grip is strong. He holds a mountain. With his left foot he plays with the snow, plunging it into the white, pulling it out, showing the snow to the sun. After a few seconds the snow starts to melt, dripping on the ground, more yellow now, like porridge. Snow doesn’t like to be described; it wants to be felt.

“Zip it!” An order now. Snow falls, softly, tenderly. Scotty doesn’t hear the voice. He’s seeing himself going down the slopes. His hips make similar movements to those he made moments ago, up the hill. He is sealing his memory. “Scotty.” A man’s voice now. “Do you want to go skiing next year? Then zip your coat.”

The boy tries to zip his coat but doesn’t know where to put his skies. His legs are like rubber bands. The man’s voice continues, blind to Scotty’s efforts: “Shall I smack you?” The words are too far away for Scotty to recognise. The man looks strong. A sportsman? His hair is white, too; cut short. His face is a map of still-to-be-lived sadness. His coat’s zipped.

Scotty sees himself in the future, when he’s become ‘Scott.’ He sees that his father is visiting him and that he leaves his coat on, zipped up. Scotty decides that if the vision comes true, he won’t ask his father to undo his jacket.

Scotty is almost losing his balance trying to do the zip thing. Only his skis hold him in place. A few seconds later he snatches something from his trouser pocket. A stone he’s grabbed, secretly. Where would he have found it? Has he had it for a long time or is it a recent find? It seems to feel familiar to him. But familiarity doesn’t say anything about time. Some things feel instantly familiar.

“So, shall I smack you?” The little boy grinds the stone: it turns to sand. It absorbs the words of his father. The little boy knows how to turn something solid soft. He has his hand open. The stone has become stone again. He knows his father cannot see it. The father’s hand is freeing itself from the body, preparing to follow up on the warning just spoken. The hand cannot reach Scotty. His eyes are simply too big: the hand that is about to smack disappears in them.

The father starts walking. From where to where?

“You know what happened to Robby? Do you want to end up like him?”

Words have been spoken.

Scotty still has the stone in his hand. This time it doesn’t get reduced to dust. It doesn’t absorb his father’s words. They go straight to Scotty’s memory, which has started up again. Everything that has happened to Robby is happening right now. Vulnerable. If nothing answers, pain will. Scotty sees his father has become stone, beyond his power. He can’t help saying it, he knows. The suppressed has its own escape routes. Can someone be blamed for that? Even when that someone is a father?

“No, I don’t want what happened to Robby to happen to me,” Scotty answers. He says it without fear in his voice. The feeling his father’s words sought to inject him with is not returned.

“Will you hold my skis?” He zips his jacket and sticks out a hand to his father. His father’s hand remains open. Red and sweaty. Damp. Scotty folds his hand into that of his father. He wants to feel his father. And feel that his father hardly feels anything himself.

In the background I see a machine up the hill, preparing the slopes. Traces being wiped out. Cleaned away. Snow is still falling and soon the hills are covered with it.

With fresh snow.

- less

“Snow will fall this night. When you wake up everything will be white. Up till your knees you will disappear in the fluffy white. And your voice will be silent. All the voices will be. Have you ever noticed that the snow steels them, voices? With snow all your secrets are safe. It prefers to talk with your feet only; in a strange way only snow understands.”

After a two hours flight, and a small taxi ride, I am arriving at Hell station, Norway; a deserted station, two lines of rusty metal and a little house, above the door of the house the name of the station painted black. There is no place to hide. The wind is too strong for my jacket. The cold too strong for my eyes to keep them open completely. Squinting: a landscape vision. I take the train for another two hours I had never expected to arrive, and I am crossing the night and the border with Sweden. Snow. Still falling, like little white shelves, folding themselves within other white shelves creating a carpet of heaven. Up until my knees I disappear.

“First we are going to learn how to stop.”

I am eager to learn how to stop. The skis on my feet don’t feel natural at all, just as the steepness of the hill. I glide and fall. I had crossed my skis and walked over my own enlarged feet.

Fifteen years ago I tried to learn to ski for the first time, invited by a friend to come along with him. I took lessons in a group: a macho teacher, wearing a moustache and an orange ski overall, like he had just stepped out of a seventies Swedish Erotica movie. Ten girls as students, and one guy, me. Like now, I fell after two seconds, gliding into a gate, my skis entrapped in it. I asked Mr Love for help, but he was already gone, with his group of ten girls, leaving me to play for half an hour or so to get my skis out of the gate again. And to get me out of the skis.

This time I have decided to be persistent, to not give up. Charlotte is the name of my teacher, in the winter she works here, and in summer she is an entertainer in a hotel in Mallorca. Her English is funny. Her body packed in red, labelled with the name of the ski school. Of what I can see, she has a particular Swedish face: quite round. There is no group this time. One to one.

After I have learned to stop we take a steeper hill. I look down and feel fear. And I feel ridiculous seeing kids no older than four taking the hill graciously. Although I have learned to stop, I fall and fall and fall, over and over again. I am going to fast to stop. The ground is too slippery. I project my falling already going up the hill in the elevator again. The first lesson is a disaster. I feel less like a child.

That night I cannot catch any sleep: my feet feel being on slippery ground. Someone is moving my feet through me, and it is not I. The whole night I fail to imagine my feet being grounded. My mind projects images of things going fast: a bullet been fired; a cockroach on a tilled floor; a plane crossing another plane; an arrow in slow motion, still going fast. I try to slow down the speed of the arrow as much as possible.

Does the arrow actually move or is it fixed in any moment of time? + more

“Snow will fall this night. When you wake up everything will be white. Up till your knees you will disappear in the fluffy white. And your voice will be silent. All the voices will be. Have you ever noticed that the snow steels them, voices? With snow all your secrets are safe. It prefers to talk with your feet only; in a strange way only snow understands.”

After a two hours flight, and a small taxi ride, I am arriving at Hell station, Norway; a deserted station, two lines of rusty metal and a little house, above the door of the house the name of the station painted black. There is no place to hide. The wind is too strong for my jacket. The cold too strong for my eyes to keep them open completely. Squinting: a landscape vision. I take the train for another two hours I had never expected to arrive, and I am crossing the night and the border with Sweden. Snow. Still falling, like little white shelves, folding themselves within other white shelves creating a carpet of heaven. Up until my knees I disappear.

“First we are going to learn how to stop.”

I am eager to learn how to stop. The skis on my feet don’t feel natural at all, just as the steepness of the hill. I glide and fall. I had crossed my skis and walked over my own enlarged feet.

Fifteen years ago I tried to learn to ski for the first time, invited by a friend to come along with him. I took lessons in a group: a macho teacher, wearing a moustache and an orange ski overall, like he had just stepped out of a seventies Swedish Erotica movie. Ten girls as students, and one guy, me. Like now, I fell after two seconds, gliding into a gate, my skis entrapped in it. I asked Mr Love for help, but he was already gone, with his group of ten girls, leaving me to play for half an hour or so to get my skis out of the gate again. And to get me out of the skis.

This time I have decided to be persistent, to not give up. Charlotte is the name of my teacher, in the winter she works here, and in summer she is an entertainer in a hotel in Mallorca. Her English is funny. Her body packed in red, labelled with the name of the ski school. Of what I can see, she has a particular Swedish face: quite round. There is no group this time. One to one.

After I have learned to stop we take a steeper hill. I look down and feel fear. And I feel ridiculous seeing kids no older than four taking the hill graciously. Although I have learned to stop, I fall and fall and fall, over and over again. I am going to fast to stop. The ground is too slippery. I project my falling already going up the hill in the elevator again. The first lesson is a disaster. I feel less like a child.

That night I cannot catch any sleep: my feet feel being on slippery ground. Someone is moving my feet through me, and it is not I. The whole night I fail to imagine my feet being grounded. My mind projects images of things going fast: a bullet been fired; a cockroach on a tilled floor; a plane crossing another plane; an arrow in slow motion, still going fast. I try to slow down the speed of the arrow as much as possible.

Does the arrow actually move or is it fixed in any moment of time?

“Do not try to look down. Just follow me down hill. Face the trees on the left, face the tree on the right”. The surroundings are stunning. “Move you whole body along with your face.” I am learning to make some turns. “All your weight on the outer ski. Push. No weight on the inside ski. Look how easily I can raise the inside ski.”

It feels unnatural to lean with the weight of my body downwards. And as soon as that thought comes to me, I loose ground and fall. I try again and have the feeling to be after something that keeps on escaping me. How can I get grip to something that is so fluid?

“Feel grounded”, she says, reading my mind. “Feeling grounded means feeling grounded at any ground. No ground is solid. Everything is always moving. Just move along with it. Trust your skis. Trust the earth.” My ski teacher suddenly turns out to be a teacher of a different order.

For years I have practised grounding, at least that was what I thought: standing in a single position, feeling my feet touching the earth, being fed by it. This is a totally new exercise to me. I am in a moving position and on a ground that doesn’t easily stick to me. Finally, I have come to a ground I have tried to escape for such a long time. It hits me how easily I have mistaken my many hours of standing: it is not the stillness that makes me come really alive; it is the movement within the stillness that actually is life.

“Now don’t push to hard with your outer ski. Make the movement round. Pushing hard makes you come to a stop. You don’t want to stop that much. For you to enjoy, you have to glide. Glide.”

And I do.

The days after I practise on my own. I glide. I fall. I glide again, and am enjoying the gliding. I gain trust, and I feel the hills have arms, embracing me, lifting me up: a shivering through my body. Now I feel like a child. Tears are aloud. Moments later I fall. I twist my ankle. I have to rest. I try again, I glide, I hate it, I fall and something comes to me that looks like if I am actually learning to appreciate slippery ground.

- less

A man with a dog, jogging and jumping across a rough meadow, white shoes and headphones, the music providing the rhythm for him and his companion; a little girl with a lollipop, holding hands with her mother, chasing a swan; a young couple in love, having an argument in the shade of a weeping willow; a man, not shaved for days, big bag in hand, eyes focused on rubbish in waste bins; a guy, early thirties, wearing a white apron, placing tables and chairs outside a little café that overlooks trees and a lake. If your eyes weren’t focused on not hurting your ankle; if your mouth wasn’t focused on the taste of a lollipop; if your mind wasn