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He closed the door of his house but in the act of closing could not forget the encounter he had had a few hours ago with his friend, the wolf, who actually had turned into a wolf and told him, in a language that was strange to him but which, to his surprise, he could immediately understand, that the world was made of foam, a tiny and transparent layer of experiences that evaporates the moment you try to catch it, foam that creates an illusion of substance and the idea that something lies between you and the world
– “be careful,” the wolf had warned, “make sure the foam doesn’t create the suggestion of two where there is really only one, and do not waste time putting energy into it for it will make you childish, like a child blowing soap bubbles who believes they are worlds outside him when they are actually created by the same substance that give form to the child itself” –
yet even as he was listening to the wolf’s howling speech, his brain struggling to digest the meaning of it all, the wolf was forging ahead
– “and when you waste time, be aware that this waste is actually the product of time, and that time itself can never be wasted, since time is just a creation of foam, as the bubble is a creation of the child” –
but these words didn’t reach him because he was too busy thinking over the other stuff the wolf had said, his mind drifting away and coming up with this strange but persistent idea that he trusted the wolf more than he had ever trusted his friend when he was just called Wolf but had not yet turned into one as this wolf probably had no need to make him feel small, saw no advantage to lying to him and would not use the manipulative strategies he had noticed his friend sometimes using (and to be honest, used himself as well) when he was still a human being, and because he trusted the wolf more than the man his friend once was the howling sounds touched him in unexpected ways opening doors of darkness that he saw and felt transform his body, making his legs weak, slowing his thinking, turning his blood a lighter colour, directing his breath to something unfamiliar, far away (like the ant he once read about who left his friends and loved ones to go to ‘far away’ and never came back) and while noticing all this happening heard how a voice had entered his body or actually how he had become attuned to a weathered voice that seemed to come from + more
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 Photo: André Platteel
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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.”
tagged: body consciousness brightnes mother light home
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 Photo: André Platteel
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