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An almost silent city. Still dark. Numb early morning. My breath becomes visible. The humming sound of a motor. A grand piano hanging in the air.
I have dreamed of playing the piano for a long time. And fallen in love with an old Bechstein that a crane is now lifting into my house. I’ve spent the last few minutes watching the piano being readied, the hook attached, and now I see it ascending into the air. Some excitement. A few neighbours join me to watch, still sleepy.
Suddenly my eyes see a different picture: no longer the piano hanging in the air, but me. I see my feet dangling in the air, trying to find solid ground; I see my arms tied up so that nothing can escape from my hands; and I see how my voice tries to make words, unintelligible.
Am I half sleeping, or was I?
Soon, I will own a great instrument. But instead of happiness, fear invades me. I feel panic. Am I afraid of owning something that big? Am I afraid of all the learning that needs to happen before I can actually play? But why this sadness? And why does this heaviness feel so big? All the feelings that don’t fit this moment burst open. The ground is disappearing. I have no clue what is going on. My skin feels like paper. I watch myself becoming more and more distant. My world seems to collapse. It is slipping through my fingers, like silence.
A few days go by. I’ve touched the piano for only a few minutes. The bass is intense. The higher tones too shrill. The sounds resonate with something I fear. I know it is not just a tune. Whatever it is that is being touched, it is strong enough to destroy me. If I hold my breath, I can hear it inside me. It has all the time in the world, been there for such a long time. The roaring. It just waits, like a sniper picking his moment.
I try to shape what happens to me when I am not asleep; the nights are needed too. The light that separates night and day has been broken. There seems only to be darkness. I am sucked into a black hole made of different fragments of darkness. Who pushed the ‘on’ button of this crazy particle machine inside me?
After a few days I feel desperate: What the hell is going on with me? My strength is ebbing. My heart tries to douse the fire. Without success. My skin bursts. No blood, but water. Unstoppable. Like a weak little boy. I feel spoilt: I, who has everything, what gives me the right to feel this way? Wake up! Be strong! Enjoy! But I can’t.
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 Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen
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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
tagged: father light circle consciousness God love wholeness life
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 Photo: André Platteel
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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.
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 Photo: André Platteel
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