the mandoline

Herb knew how to handle the mandoline. At the age of twelve he had made one. It hadn't been a real mandoline but it looked as if it was a mandoline and it made noise. In that early stage of his career he played the mandoline he had made quite often. It didn't exactly make the sound of a mandoline but anyone who heard him playing that mandoline nonetheless liked it. At the age of seventeen he became a genius. He maybe could have been told he wasn't, but in a poor family as ours we didn't care. I hadn't had the impression that Herb impressed me too much playing his mandoline. It was his attitude rather that made a stronge impression, if he played that mandoline or not. He behaved as someone of knowledge. It would take several reincarnations to know as much as he knew. Only much later I discovered that he had taken from my library, at that moment not really a library as I lived abroad, a volume called Kunst : Praxis Heute. I hadn't been aware of the importance of that volume. It didn't tell me anything but the crap I didn't like. Herb had phrased my name on both sides with black ink. Beneath that black stroke he had left his name, as the mandoline and the noise it made. He left the date in my handwriting. It impressed me and the mandoline made its tiny noise. Herb knew how to handle the mandoline.

x

I can read, yes. And I can read newspapers, yes. I do not find it difficult to read newspapers, no, it's not that difficult. I find it depressing. Yes. Yes, I think newspapers are depressing, and now that I found out how really depressing it is I think it eventually was not a very good idea my parents had when they first send me to school, I should have said I guess that I didn't feel the need to learn the things I had to learn, especially reading, because I am able to read now, pa, and what I read is depressing. Yes. And it even is not the worst thing, when I read a newspaper, what I read. Not at all. More depressing than all this daily fermented, all this desorientating, all this mentally deficient information, all this seductive but unbalanced scribbling, all this exalted daily commandments, 'this' what one easily just as well could call 'that', far more depressing than all that is those irrelevant, those unelephantlike, those fanatically triumphant and imbecile faces I see, yes. Oh. Oh. How poor would I have felt if I had been able to do such a thing. It gradually makes me unable to read, yes. I am uncapable, yes, uncapable, I am uncapable to look at those faces, I feel unable to be urged to read and to look, at the very same moment, at, yes, that I urgently need, if I may so, to swallow those greedy faces, yes. I am not interested, not at all, not for that tiniest little fragment of a second, in the story of a princess that wants to be an artist, yes, or wants to be a princess maybe, yes. Nonetheless each day again, now that I am able to read, I have to read that story. Wouldn't it be far better not to be able to read, I ask myself. Or this one: in one or other capital they plan to raise taxes on cars, a private company will take care of that. So I read this, as I unfortunately am able to read, and meanwhile I need to look at that face of a gent who thinks it necessary to be responsible for all that. On what would I reflect if I hadn't been able to read? What would it be if I only saw non-dimensional forms instead of faces. I am blinded by the news I read, yes. I feel unable to read it and the faces I need to look at make it worse.

dirt

The dirt had over 300.000 years.
Herb and Daisy meanwhile bought an appartment.
It started all over again.

vandaag

In wat De Morgen vandaag publiceert, gaat het bijna uitsluitend over marketing. Op het rooster met het gebruikelijke veelvoud aan veldjes is alleen dat veldje ingekleurd: 4,5 miljoen Belgen betalen te hoge gsm-rekening, Vlaams, Vlaamser, Kris, De zesde staatshervorming in centen, Snoep brengt half miljoen per dag op, Met ons spaargeld komen we er niet. Zelfs bij de afbeelding van een eekhoorn hoort een bedrag: 220.000 euro. Wie zijn de mensen die zo'n krant samenstellen, waar zijn ze mee bezig, waar liggen ze wakker van. Is er niets beter te verzinnen dan het de hele tijd door alleen maar over geld hebben? OK, akkoord, ze schrijven over Syrië, ze schrijven over Egypte. We weten dat het bloedbad in Syrië ook alleen maar aanhoudt omdat Poetin wapens aan Syrië wil kunnen leveren. We weten net zo goed dat de Tour de France niet veel meer dan een perverte luxe is. En wat ik eigenlijk ook best gek vind: Standard & Poor's vindt Italië (bijna) rommel. 'E allora?' Vanuit welk perspectief zou Italië... Z'n status als grote economische mogenheid kwam in het gedrang. Dan zou ik daar toch maar voor gaan, als ik Italië was. In de wereld gaat het teveel alleen maar om geld. OK, akkoord, ik trap een open deur in. Alsof niemand merkt dat het ook maar voor geen nanoseconde op een kier komt te staan. Er is maar één mogelijkheid eigenlijk, we moeten af van die economische belangen. Hoe dat zou kunnen? Geen hond die het weet.
En dan lees ik ook nog dat ze in Cadzand appartementen gebouwd hebben. Verrek. In De Standaard hadden ze het daarover. Een reporter is in Cadzand langs geweest, heeft er foto's gemaakt: het oude Cadzand: het nieuwe Cadzand. Dat nieuwe Cadzand willen ze niet zo over de richel, lees ik, dat het op Knokke gaat lijken. Kunnen ze zo'n strandje gewoon simpelweg niet met rust laten? Er is toch helemaal geen vooruitgang. De mensheid is er veel slechter aan toe dan pakweg 300.000 jaar geleden.
Ach, ach.

scum

What I always found so spontaneously intriguing about Harry is his capacity to ignore whatever I tell him. Whatever I tell him, he ignores it. Whak, he says. That's all he says. Whak, whak, whak. I often tried to figure out what the sound meant. Harry sure had no part in the Trinity, thank god. Nature furthermore had given him a somewhat akward shape. He wasn't particularly what once through so many beloved scribblings and writings has been known to be a Greek god. Were you, Harry? See, that's what I always liked so very much about Harry: he ignores what I tell him, look, look at him, he simply ignores it, and, meanwhile, he looks at me with such a silly face as if I were, if I may say so, a goddess, and again he does. He always does. Don't you, Harry. And he did so for every single second of his unloved and unique live. Here we have what I admire about Harry. Me a goddess? Holy shit, thanks no. I have over a three hundred pounds of fat to elevate. But wouldn't it be fascinating to know more about me? That's precisely, I guess, why I am so fond of Harry: he stares at me as if he really wants to know all of it, having none of it or even less. Obvious, abvious, ubvious, ibvious, whatever you want to call it, say, why not call it ibilitious - that's what is so pleasing with Harry. I love him. Oh yes, I am so deeply in love with Harry. Did you hear what I told these people, Harry? Harry, don't look at me with such a silly face. Come on, silly, don't look at me like that. Aren't you pleased to have so many people humbled to hear me tell about what you really are? Scum, it's me, Fattie, don't say you haven't heard a thing.

At the age of twelve, should we not eagerly tell this, Harry, to that party reading pages radiating splendidly with spirit and comfortable, generous wit, not to mention anything else I generously could have offered, should we not eagerly tell this to all those mudheads out there getting on with ten o'clock tricks just as lousy as your unfortunate seemings: at the age of twelve Harry got confronted with some extraordinary gifts. During what very well may have been - what unquestionable must have been - his second encounter with the female sex organ, he took his head off. The night had been filled with beetles. A female riding two elephants sat on top of it. Take it easy, Harry, his father said. Harry nonetheless ate the head and got entangled in some theory on the remaining part. He ate that too. From the excrements a new human being came, named Harry. Harry bought a television set. He sat in front of it. And so I came in, The Being.

television

For three hours and a half Bruce had been sitting in front of that stupid telly. It didn't make a sound and there was nothing to be seen. The vacuum in which he sat had first reached to Rock Hill and it had touched Beatty park where only some few days earlier a dog had been killed. Rudy. Sure enough Rudy had been a dog soon after his longing to become one. He's always been that dog, Mabel, you know about that. Bruce told her. Three lads, one of them had been a brownskin, had stumbled to Janet's place one day. George had been there. You know George don't you. And Rudy had been there. But Mabel had been living near San Diego for a couple of years. Sure she must have met George and Rudy at least once, but she couldn't remember. Bruce stared at the empty screen, reached his lefthand to one of the bottles. Guns and gold - damn shit, that's how it first had felt with Mabel. Bruce couldn't reach the bottle. Half empty it was. The other half was on its way to a more fortunate scenery downstairs. Bruce knew something and he wouldn't tell it even if they knocked on the frontdoor and asked him for it. They quite often pleasantly joked about it, how George and Rudy had done things Janet didn't want to happen, but it had happened anyway, Rudy did it on the carpet as he had done so often before, and George had done just that little bit more than looking with a sardonic smile at sweet old Janet. Please take notice of this, write it down, master of Cacaphonia, write it down: Janet never could have been that old. But cute she was whatever age she had.
Rock Hill, ten miles south. The vacuum had reached as far as Rock Hill, but, then, gradually, it had lost that vibrance to be out there and through Pleasant Road it finally had reached the kitchendoor and before Texas Dirt had started the complete house had been filled with it. No more talk on Rudy, please. But, then, Mabel, he thought, don't we share at least that one little thing Rudy had? Bruce made a large gesture, once more tried to reach the bottle. He finally got it. For a second or seven he stared at the bottle. Empty it was. Mabel goddammit. After that he stared at the black blank in front of him. His gaze switched from bottle to gobble-cage. He tried to get up. Mabel lay on the floor. She lay next to the dresser. Bruce couldn't remember what use Mabel ever could have had. A fly sang its dirty song. He expected rain to ring at the window. It was hot as hell. The whole goddamn house had to be cleaned and he knew he wasn't able to do it. He stared at the ceiling.

harmless

Please, believe me, killing is harmless. Six one hundred thousand have been killed.
It is harmless, believe me. 7 milliard could have been killed.
Is it not better to kill a dog or an elephant for that very same reason? A dog, yes yes. An elephant, yes yes.
Yes, is it better to kill the dog. It is better to kill dogs, fish, dinosaurs and elephants. You see
We must kill the dog, and we could do that killing, don't you think so. Killing is harmless. Take any elephant.
Billiards of perceptions have been killed. So, please, trust me, it is harmless. Elephants got killed.
We have to take it as such. The dog got killed? It won't matter that much. You are wanted,
alive or dead.
Please, believe me, it is harmless. So many people have been killed.

Daisy and Herb

I would like to tell you something about Daisy and Herb. You know Herb? I didn't. Herb used to sit at Finkel's. We called it Finkel's. That is I called it Finkel's. Finkel, which wasn't his real name, ran a vinyl store near San Diego airport. It maybe was not that near San Diego airport, I wouldn't know, I've never been to San Diego, and it maybe wasn't San Diego and it wasn't a vinyl store maybe, but whatever it was, Herb used to sit there, at Finkel's, that's what I think it was, and it is told he sat there each day, each day again indeed, and that his usual hour was six o'clock at night. That's what Sulliman Cooper told me. I knew Finkel from the papers. They had written on Finkel. That is I called him Finkel. The way I knew him, having phantasies on his solemn occupation, Finkel selling vinyl releases no one really cared for, Finkel having no less than three bathtubes in the back of his house, in one of the bathtubes he kept a small baby crocodile from the species known as Alligator mississippiensis, Finkel himself, always being Finkel and no one else, Herr Finkel, to admit the idea that he must have had German roots, drinking coffee in a far too noisy way, as if he had to step through the coffee. Herb sat at the window. Finkel's had four windows and in front of each of that stood three sanseveria. It could not be ignored that they had a brown color. Herb always sat in front of the window next to the entrance and he never drank anything else but bourbon and mint tea, reading both newspapers Finkel's offered and reading each syllable of it. If Herb had the newspaper it easily took a couple of hours. He didn't run through the news, as I did, he took it syllable after syllable and ate it, chewed on each phrase and seemingly kept chewing until nothing was left of it. Now I remember that Herb, or Bernie, as some of the customers said, But lets talk about Daisy. What's your name, honey? Daisy, she said. Daisy had been born fat and grewing up she in a most easy way became fatter, fatter and fatter. She became so fat that one day Herb took notice of her. They married on July 6th in 1977. I now first will take a shit, Herb said to the newly arrived phenomenon. On behalf of that phrase Daisy added nothing that could have been meant to be an answer. I first take a shit now, Herb said. Daisy didn't react on that. Herb's eyes captered her stare. There she shat. Honey, he said.

paper

There was that weird conversation I had with Brenda. She's been working for our organisation since a couple of years. We most often meet in the corridor, drink coffee and talk on the weather. Brenda is a Facebook maniac. I hesitate to tell this sort of thing, as I don't have a Facebook account myself. She does. 'There's no paper,' she said.
'What?'
'There's no paper.' She looked at me as if she expected me to take notice of the fact that there wasn't any paper. No what? Didn't her eyes gleam, with a dark and joyfull twist, like they always gleamed? Wouldn't she have looked at me with that very same gaze if I just for fun had tried out a newly bought Bermuda or jokingly said: 'Hi, Brenda, what's that shit on your face, honey?' I didn't wear any Bermuda and there was nothing strange about her face. I helped her with a coin. She took her coffee and while she did, standing with her back to me, I noticed, as I had noticed so many times before, how thin she was. She wore a, euh, jupon and for that very reason they had invented the word. She had it short, one and a half a mile above her knees.
'There's no what, Brenda?' I said, sure enough avoiding speculation on anything else but a definit answer. Weeks are boring. Selling houses, buying houses and that whole trade of destroying old ones to build new ones, I had been bored with that for more than just half an hour. I'm so bored with the damn shit, Brenda, but it wasn't precisely what I had intended to say. I didn't say it. It had been the least of my intention to say such a thing to Brenda. One and a half a mile above her knees a key could be turned but it most often turned the wrong direction. 'There's no paper,' she said, 'we need to buy some.'
'Oh, do we. I wouldn't,' I said. 'I never use it anyway.'
'What?' The expression on her face hadn't changed. Even nearly blind, she never would need glasses.
'Well, I said I never use it.'
'What?'
'Why I never use it is a good question,' I said. She didn't smile and she didn't look as if she wanted to hear anything more on the issue, so we closed the issue and drank our coffee. Through one of the windows, as I went to the bathroom, I noticed a dog on the pavement. Black, big and hairy. I stripped my pants down, sat, read some funny thing in a daily that someone had left in the cabin. Then I noticed that Brenda had been right, there wasn't any paper.

the rotten man

A cruelly rotten man stepped from her grave and took with him all of her that had been left behind. He took her mind, killed a dog, he went so far to feed the dog to the skull.
There's always that moment, I guess, to slip through a backdoor, dead but full of conscious.
The thing left behind won't add anything else, nothing better than the taste it had.

The rotten man didn't need too much place. He went to a bar and drank a beer. Gimme some more,
he said. The barmaid did. He shrank, made some gesture, half conscious of both his attitude and hers.
Why furniture instead of nothing else. Why those images she had on her face, naked, dull.
She took his tale, lifted it, and from the point where she stood it vanished, deliberate, unconscious.

Now let me tell you something, the rotten man said. I've been dead for so many years.
I've been unconscious so many years. I know, the maiden said. Can't you take from the parts I have,
from that multitude of parts, that single one that makes me full, the cruelly rotten man said.
No, the barmaid said. It is against knowledge. You are not allowed to be here, she said.

travel

Neema Ba on 14th Teheran.
Braila, on 11th, Roumania.
Except of Capri maybe, Benjamin has no travel schedule.
Capri maybe.
Jonathan takes New York and maybe France and a couple of days in Amsterdam.
Blois, someone says.
Gerben meant London.
Mathias goes nowhere. Japan needs the liquid it needs.
Fatima turns to Hungary, R'm to Israel.
Lelaj has no plans.
Golnesa intends to visit the Caspian sea and the coast where she was born.

the bird

Reading on birds makes me sick. In a newspaper I read about a newly discovered bird, the Aurornis xui. It makes me sick. I start to vomit. Someone turns to the table where I sat. Can I help you, she asks. It's Madeleine. Madeleine is a cute blonde. She's half naked, which she shouldn't do. There's no reason why I need to see tits, whenever I look at Madeleine. There's no reason why I need to see fat, worn out meat and quite often even a punch of more delicate matter, whenever I look at Madeleine. This time her charming altruism didn't disturb me all too much. Birds make me sick, I said. Laurey, she said, honey, wouldn't you get home. I will, I said. Standing on the concrete path, next to the gasoline station, in a swing of dazzling light, a blue Chrysler took off to the highway, I tried to foresee the misery, walking home, and for a second or two I felt bright and lighthearted as in Medieval times sure enough quite often must have happened to that ancestor standing in front of a bleeding blade, nearly half a thought before it reached the skin it now had as a new switch of unfortunate fate.
I opened the frontdoor. Birdsong came from the main room. Ssssshut up, I shouted. I never, I really never would have raised my voice, not with Madeleine, not in front of anyone, but that bird felt too much at home. It had been there, in the livingroom, on the dresser, next to a pile of nude zines and dirty daily's. I went to the kitchen, took a can of China beer from the fridge. Damn, I said. You may accuse me of anything, major, I thought, but don't even start to sweat on the idea that I would be able to touch Madeleine. She's killed so often, major, being Jack's bride. I swallowed the can and lingered for a while on Madeleine. She didn't have much of a future. Cars ate from the concrete and a song of Cooder came to my mind. I had to think about it and I didn't. For some reason I failed thinking about the thing I had to be thinking about. Madeleine? Such noble feature. What could be wrong with such noble feature. I opened a door, stepped through the main room. There it stood, next to a pile of newspaper. The bird made it's usual noise. I opened the cage, dragged the bird from it, sat on the floor, had the bird in one hand, ripped my pants off with the other, jee, I hadn't been aware of the fact that I was able to do such a thing. I really had to. After doing what I had to do I gently put the bird in its cage and closed the cage.

een avond

Juan scheldt me verrot. We zitten op het terras van Minor Swing. Er is een dame. Een van de handpalmen van Juan zit vast aan de dame. Hij begint over m'n oorring te zeiken. Het verbaasde me dat de hersenhelften, die hij op een of andere manier toch hebben moest, zich daarmee bezighielden. Je nodigt me niet uit, roept hij. Zonder het nog ingewikkelder te maken, probeerde ik uit te vissen wat hij daarmee bedoelde, tot ik opeens begrijp dat hij wellicht bedoelt dat we hem niet gevraagd hadden om in het kunstencentrum een concert te geven. Omdat hij te duur was, herinner ik me. Hij had toen een tapasbar in Oudburg. Ik kwam er af en toe. Je kon er lekker eten. Nu is 't een frituur. In 1999 had hij in croxhapox een fabelachtig concert ten beste gegeven tijdens een vernissage met projecten van Marc Maet en Michaël Borremans. Ik denk trouwens dat het ook toen was dat ik besefte dat ik weer naar Spanje moest. Wat ik deed. Ze hadden gedanst op de muziek van Juan. Marc vertrouwde me toe dat hij niet wist waar hij het had. Hij had een Porsche, herinner ik me, en één keer, op een avond, had hij z'n Porsche vlak voor huisnummer 54 geparkeerd.
Ik antwoord niet op de beschuldigingen van Juan, nu we op het terras van Minor Swing tegenover elkaar zitten. Hij had maar niet over die oorring moeten beginnen. Regen zeilt over het wegdek. Zo is het nu eenmaal natuurlijk, ik word de hele tijd door aangevallen, zelfs door mensen waar je het niet van verwachten zou. Een man met minirok en collants en hakken is kennelijk zo'n heikel ding dat ze er op Mars geen plaats voor hebben. Het is niet moeilijk om te begrijpen dat het ook werkelijk zo is, met het nog altijd geldende kader zijn man en vrouw aparte dingen. Een man is stoer, een vrouw kan zich wat minder permitteren. Het feminisme is eigenlijk ook wel gestrand op het feit dat een vrouw een broek dragen kan, wat na verloop van tijd opeens aanvaardbaar leek, en dat ze kon doen wat ze maar wilde doen. Zolang de omkering onaanvaardbaar is, heb ik toch wat vragen bij dat femenisme. Wat bedoelen ze met het argument dat man en vrouw gelijke rechten hebben.

nobody's porn

I step inside the car. Don't worry about that. I try the key. It works. It is a miracle that I have the key. I'm quite often such a lazy mudhead. I had the key. I move the car to the main lane, hadn't seen the bike. I had an excellent mood. Did I tell you? I felt. I had that feel. Nothing ever would or could touch it as I surrounded the car and its surroundings with that excellent mood I had. I look at a screen of poplar trees. How nice poplar trees standing there along that dreadful lane. It first didn't disturb me all too much. What could have dismantled that pleasant mood anyway. I had, I may say, an excellent feel about as good as anything. And I must not hesitate to say that it had been a miracle that I had the key, I hadn't lost it on a place where I damn sure wouldn't have found it during a period of at least many thousand years. There's so many places and on those places so many things get lost. Man, no, I had the key. One could have lost it at so many places, I must say, and even apart from that, as thoughts and movements so often take a strange turn, the object easily itself could have disappeared inside the soft surroundings of a seat with no other moral edge than the fact that it couldn't help disappearing and kept disappearing. But I had the key. I sort of wondered though why a bike should be biking on a lane even not meant for bikers, and no one on it. It was so beautiful to see a bike get go on its own. A fat lady had been on it. She could have had no idea on how daring that was. Art school students most often have no idea of the danger. Oh oh, someone of knowledge exclaims, don't let your mind be stuffed with a higher meaning, with the solution these tutors want you to add to a thing you never would have conceived if they hadn't told you to do so. Make decent things. Go for a walk. Don't let anyone tell you that you are an artist, don't let anyone tell you that it's pure and gold. You have been conceived as crap, sweetheart, darling, and this you must feel and experience in its most narrow end before you even could get to the idea what it is. From the gold raise no decent work. Oh oh, from the gold raise nothing else but the stone age of memory and you will be a slave to worship these fallen walls, fallen into the darkest depth of moth-eaten imagery.
There was no lady on the bike, even not a quarter of the lady, fat as she had been. She sat in front of the wheel. A person of whome I maybe once may have seen a mirrored smile took the bike and dragged it to the enrance of a nearby house. He half turned his face towards me. One thing struck me. Her face. How can I explain that pleasant embarrassment now that I saw that weird individual, half naked half dressed with something that looked like a layer of Heinz tomato ketchup. I dare to say, it looked very tasty and very healthy indeed. The person so wonderfully dressed turned his head towards the car and he turned it twice. With the first turn it was a man's face. It had excellent features. His eyes were bleeding but apart from that not a bit of horror advertised on the face of that smart looking fellow, so well-dressed as he was. Then, the fat lady just as well had a pleasant surprise as I was sitting inside her wealthy parts, surrounded by its carnivorous abundance. I had no theory about it. Theories are no food for someone with such a healthy appetite as she had. Not for one single second did I consider to measure the new features I had. I drove on, fat as a hippopotamus, as each being of intellect driving his or her car to some unknown destiny could have concluded, without the slightest intention of course to hurt anyone else. Frankly, this is the least of anyone's thoughts.