.

les mains.

les enfants sourds.

sans titre.

la fille aux yeux de verre.

 

cave.

 

 

 

 

fading face.

 

 

 

portraying hungary.

 

 

theme: i love you.

 

often i wonder, how it is we fall in love. But that magic i get through pretty quickly, as we tremble with desire and swallow the other’s words, endlessly long for the scent of the others’ presence. Yet, when time passes and it is not about making a move and enjoying every step of the way, but there is place for quarrels and for the fear of losing each-other (as a consequence of getting attached to one another in the hours of pink flamingo soufflés and whispers of loving tenderness). In these times, i wonder, is it the repetition of the famous three words that keeps us up? So often we tell each other, and ourselves the “i love you”s, after the disputes, and so often these seem to be the moments of regained faith and hope. We see the summer figure in the other again, the love we shared on these festival days tickling up the spines. How important is it to keep telling oneself the three words, as a mantra almost, to keep the love actual, alive? Can’t we make ourselves believe about, um, anything, really? So, how much of love, is something we made up and started to believe in as if our lives depended on it? How much of love is in the head, while it ought to be/used to be in the heart?

 

Some famous psychiatrist, once said that to be together, really together, in the idea of creating an “us”, the two people involved should die, to let the “us” be born. If a third “one” (a dog, a child,…) gets involved, again, the individuals must die in order to build. Of-course, this can not be about letting your personality fade, as this should be the fundament on which the other person’s love is based. It is about letting your ego flow. The ego is -according to the dictionary-a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. Most quarrels could be avoided if regular remarks weren’t taken like statements, or attacks even on a personal level. If your partner repeatedly asks you to do the dishes, you could read into it he/she says you’re lazy, not doing anything at all in the house-hold, or anything else that you actually blame yourself for. Now if you have a low esteem of yourself, the love of the other one should push that up to the level, that you can let go of the fear to be criticized, and quarrels can be quarrels, in which dishes are dishes, and discussions, end faster.

 

That sounded like a nice conclusion, but, what if one’s admiration for the self is too high, and therefor, this one can not take any remarks on anything he/she does, for he/she thinks itself to be perfect. Or do people who think of themselves to be perfect, not give a damn about others opinions? And if you think your soul to be endlessly adorable, pure and well-formed, do you read anything in quarrels about the dishes? Or do people with a huge ego, just hide their insecurity in the size of their confident act?

 

 

When touching and questioning the matter, it is my duty to also bring up the influence external channels have. The idea of finding “the one” has been fed by endless tales in various shapes. We are expected, so to speak, to speak so! We long for love, i think, for a very big part, as a mimetic desire. I see you love, it looks lovely, i’d love some of that. When people are asked, what love is, it is “too big for words”, poets can’t abandon the attempt to describe it, for it is something we can only circle around. Or it is like Joseph Beuys’ performance, where he speaks to the dead (haas) he is holding, explaining his work, yet the audience is outside, peeking through the window, finding but his intention to speak.

 

At school i remember learning a philosophers’ phrase “what we are not able to talk about, we should not speak of.” I never really got that. Maybe, while we can not define or describe the deep emotion(?) that love is (supposed to be), we attach to it something we do know: a person. There is born, the personification of love. The great expectations which were generated by the various story-lines, merge in a face, which is blessed/doomed, to make the dream come through. For the love of god, what a situation!

 

Living happily ever after is another formulation that never gets visualized, ever in movies, rarely in real life. This mystery itself, must be the love of my life.

 

 

ORIGIN Old English lufu, of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit lubhyati ‘desires,’ Latin libet ‘it is pleasing,’ libido ‘desire,’ also by leave ² and lief .

 

 

 

 

 

zalf.

¶    we wachten op de sneeuw, mijn tenen wijzen al in die richting, met hun pijnlijke lokale verdikking. de plassen zijn hard geworden. de wangen bleek. hongaarse harige wenkbrauwen steken af tegen de vale hemel. ikzelf ben nu zo geworden (zo ingeburgerd?), dat de straattegels mij minder vervelen dan de blikken van zijn bewandelaars. zo nu en dan sleep ik volledig mee op de duizelingwekkend grijze sfeer die heerst. dan word ik bitter en schuw. dan vloek ik met samengeperste lippen op die puilende ogen die òf negeren, òf gapen. het enige dat ik hoor is het geblaas van mijn computer. dus nu ben ik beginnen lopen, in de hoop zo die rondhangende menselijke misselijke mist voorbij te steken. het gestrompel en de irritatie die deze voortbrengt te snel af te zijn. mijzelf de pas af te snijden. dan word ik zelf de regen, maak ik zelf de wind, verzin ik zin voor vrieskou. dan smeed ik mijn ijzer, olie ik mijn scharnieren, maak ik van roest weer de roes van rust. In de kleinste potjes zit de beste zalf.

 

 

moving image of a dead town.

 

 

 

vingt dessins.

dear,

here some drawings i made for you. most of them were made in the emergency waiting-room of the local hungarian hospital, where i spy on the population, like a real ramptoerist.

sép napod. (good day!)

feel free to write me essays, obscure diary-summaries, love letters, novels, expressions of any anything.

hungarians de-frost.

it’s cold, so i curl up next to him. Our stomachs are full of sweet hungarian specialties, satisfied by milk in bags and i doubt. The question of what i am to do when i get used to this surrounding that once seemed so strange, arises more and more often. What shall I write about, what can be a source of inspiration to make this project work, when alienation and surprise are traded for logic and habit?

The remarkable grayness of this “city” with cold sighs of twisted heads that wander around in it and the constant sleeping mode of the streets, loose their originality. It’s when i take pepper from the cupboard and am confronted with the unpronounceable hungarian translation, that i realize my geographical position. Or when wrestling with german fluency in a conversation with the one girl i met. Or on my birthday, when i wonder if the denial of the importance of it may be rooted in tradition. But more often, it starts to KABBELEN.

Some small changes are taking place. On the flea-market, some of the salespeople recognize me, and nod. The ladies in the shop across the street (the one with the cow at the counter, who makes my milk go bad), are getting softer. In the library my existence is acknowledged, and my acquired skills concerning hungarian forms of politeness were yesterday even encouraged by a thumb pointing towards the ceiling. When I come search for my man and some inspiration in the waiting-room of the emergency department of the hospital, i regularly find a smile of a doctor within my sight.

So while the air is turning into ice, the townsmen are defrosting for my presence, i am -very slowly and still only by few -being accepted, recognized and seem to be “validated” in my existence. While this warms my heart, it turns the conviction i thought to be true at my arrival, concerning the sad and cold humans surrounding me. Gradually i understand how knowing only a few words in Hungarian, feed their linguistic pride, how many are so surprised by a smile of a stranger on the sidewalk, that they mainly look stupified and how the amount of fat in their bodies is a direct consequence of the traditional, national dishes.

What will come after becoming aware of these things, after the values show themselves to my surface, after learning about absurdly low wages and the hungarian eye walls?

eye wall

Meteorology noun

the area immediately outside the eye of a hurricane or cyclone, associated with tall clouds, heavy rainfall, and high winds.

liplik

ik wil likken die werken, mijn vel wordt kip. de grillige lijnen, getormenteerde poses, doen al mijn lippen kleven, mijn ledematen schudden. ik ruik de vloer en het parfum van een oude. soms vloek ik fluisterend mn verstomming uit,

eindelijk ben ik weer hier.