De engel, de vrouw en de dood. Gedichtenbundel

History is a nightmare from which
I am trying to escape.
                                 James Joyce








Voor Angie




------------------------------------------------





ENJEU



Haar wierook werd verbandgaas
van zoet zweet en immer hijgen
op luchtkussens en waterbedden zwijgen
bij een treurbeuk naast snel water.

Als dubbelspion en drenkeling
in de draaikolk voor haar sas
keek hij in ruim tienduizend ogen.


-----------------------------------------


Priesteres van passiespelen
aangaande eb en vloed in ons
bleef zij bevreemdend en verwant
als bloed en sneeuw, als vuur.

Fluitspel deint over de dennen
en de dieren, het wordt nacht
- zij glimlacht, op haar tanden speelt
  de maan, weerkaatst in watervallen
  op gezwollen stromen midden wouden
  nooit in kaart gebracht tot nu.


---------------------------------------------


Bandeloos binding betrachten
met bloesems die haar bloed bestieren
de pavane van haar passie wijden
zoals ertsaders aardlagen.

In half ontgonnen dagen, duurzaam
veinzen wij afscheid en vaarwel
voortdurend, doch voorlopig.



-------------------------------------------


DE ENGEL



De engel is als de muur van Berlijn
of een pop zonder ogen of haar,
zalvend zingt hij zijn hymne,
jij huivert
en zijn wals wekt je woede,
je lust.

Discreet blijft hij bij je
op doelloze reizen
present met zijn paspoort
van blind passagier
elke denkbare naam
heeft hij ooit eens gestolen
en hij kreunt of hij steunt niet,
hij krijst !


-------------------------------------------




Waanzinnig doorworstelt
en drenkt hij in liefde
het waanbeeld van àl
wat je al dan niet weet.

Met vlaggen en wimpels,
beschilderde waaiers,
gaat hij blind, en in stilte,
verdwaald en verdwaasd,
in het huis van je adem op pad.

Een nijdas, zingt hij,
van zon, noodgedwongen
een lied dat hij intikt
op rekenmachines van goud
en verdriet
is hem vreemder dan steen.


-------------------------------------



Naakt onder jou
als een vrouw vol satijn
zonder tijd noch getal
zonder nummer of naam
wordt hij steevast
het standbeeld der jaren.


Alleen, moederziel en
zielsveel zelfbedruipend
stokt klef in je keel zijn gebed
tot de tranen en tranen
die nooit kunnen komen
het wondvocht dat dromen doordrenkt.


Hij slaat en hij sloeg
zijn stempel, zijn brandmerk
in elk blad van elke bloem.


---------------------------------------------



Zijn rebussen en raadsels wekten
de praatlust van feniks en sfinks
en in de bloedbaan van hun doolhof
verdwaalden wij tweeën op leven en dood.

Zijn voetsporen, zijn fluisteren
maken mij radeloos en razend
nu hij achter mij, nu naast mij
zijn zwaard streelt en begeesterd
voor de vuist weg van de dood spreekt,
in een taal die vloekt en zalft.

Hij is zaad en tevens einde
luidsprekers laf in mijn lijf
illusie vloekend, zegenend;
in wolken, week, onwerkelijk,
kerft hij trappen voor krijgers
en legers vol dood en vernieling.
Ik zie aan zijn ogen, de dood is een vrouw.




----------------------------------------------------



DE VROUW




Hardvochtig en zachtaardig grift
zij lange lijnen in mijn hand,
mijn lijf en leven, hier gemonsterd.

Ja, wij ontgroeiden onze grappen,
hun muziek bij onze ziekte.

Zoals een spin spon stilte draden
dwars doorheen wat wij verwonderd,
nét ontwaakt, verwoorden wilden.


---------------------------------------------


In jouw vraag en antwoord ingebed
zijn sieraden, zo wrang verankerd ook
in borelingen en kadavers.

Als een wijze, welwillend, een zoeker
word ik tegoedertrouw, half comateus
voor spiegels in verzegelde vertrekken,
voor spiegels uitgespreid, spiernaakt.


-----------------------------------------------



De wet van ons offer heet oogst
van mijn handen gekneusd en gekneed
tot de scepter van de minnaar
zijn gerei en zijn alaam.

Wij worden urnen, worden vazen
voor fluorbloesems uit de zee.

Gans goud van schuimwijn vormt jouw mond
mijn naam die in jouw pacht
kersvers is, nieuw, onuitgesproken.


------------------------------------------------


Zeelui, mét of zonder schip,
zelfs op een maanzeebodem,
bezongen haar geplogenheden.
Zij bleef broos als herfstdraden
die zilver worden, zienderogen.
Dààrop wou hij koorddansen
- op haar touw van hel tot heil.

Hij: als een wandelende tak,
zwervend ver voorbij vulkanen.
Zij: met haar goedertieren grillen
straffeloos en nachtelijk
al zijn erfzondes delgend
in een heelal vol dode hoeken.

Zij bracht hem binnen, brengt hem buiten
gaf hem leven, geeft hem dood
als een vroom bezettingsleger
in een onbelangrijk land.


-------------------------------------------------


DE DOOD




Ter kennisgeving gaf zij mij
- vol van de glimlach in haar lijf -
stenen, rotsjes, paddestoelen
en postzegels uit niemandsland.

Later kunstfoto's van vlinders
die zij zeer goed gekend had, maar
zij bleven naamloos als gevoelens.

Éénkennig noemde ik hun kleuren
prees hun transparante vleugels
tot zij door de kamer zweefden
en teder landden op haar hand
mij watermerkend, voor vervalsing veilig nu.

En de zon, zij ziedt en zengt
zij wordt de aarde tot een zweep
en de palmwijn voor de bruiloft
gist vergeefs in kalebassen.



--------------------------------------------



In onmin en onzin, de éénling
voor anker als een schip vol schroot
gewenkt nog enkel door de waan.
Sinds mensenheugenis of mythe
vindt hij de bronnen steeds dooddroog
- gedoemd zijn dorp en straat.

'sNachts, als eenzaamheid normaal lijkt,
bezweert hij beschonken, met woorden
het onheil van de dagen die
als bruidsluiers, welig maar radio-actief
koudvurig zijn muren verteren.

Ik denk; de dood is een geeuw
mijn kaken ontwrichtend voorgoed
- enkel dat.




--------------------------------------------------



Ik heb mijn eind in pand genomen
mijn dood zal mij niet meer bedriegen
uit schemering tevoorschijn schietend
als een bekeurende agent.

Gedaan dus met in driest verdriet
vergeefs vergetelheid te vinden
en bitterheid toestaan te rijpen
als een bejaarde dageraad.


Dàt is meinedig afgezworen
voor meer waarheid, wezenheid
in ontragisch tranendal.

En in maanlicht dansen wij
demonisch
droom en waan trotserend.



---------------------------------------------




Wachten werd een bastonnade
een marathon spitsroeden lopen
hand voor hand, hartstochtelijk.
Vuist voor vuist nu, weg, zijnsweegs
als een vastberaden rups
krimpt hij, kronikeur van kuitschieten
tot standbeeld, ijlend bij rivieren
vol van slijk, wondvocht en etter.

De dood brengt de engel
de engel de vrouw.
En ik ben een tuinman
die schielijk en schuw
eerbiedig doch bars
aan kisten en graven
aan kransen zijn kracht wijdt.

Ik klauw in de aarde
en vloek binnensmonds
de weg en het pad roepen halt.


---------------------------------------------------



ENVOI


De regen valt schuin en onverdroten
als een steeds doorzichtig scherm
over de muur van Hadrianus
en hoger over Inverness
en lager over Lancashire.

Een scherm valt over de Esk, een rivier
tussen heuvels waar wij tweeën staan
gebeeldhouwd in de regen die valt
als scherm van stilte in de dalen.



----------------------------------------





En nu raad ik U, zoals een dokter
- ga U vlak voor risico's
   te buiten aan een uitspatting
   die zich jareen heugen laat.
Dit niet te doen duid ik U euvel !

-----------------------------------------





1974-1987. Eskdalemuir, Londen, Kyoto, Boechout
De hele cyclus werd in afleveringen gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift Diogenes in de loop van 1991.
Het gedicht "ter kennisgeving" werd gepubliceerd in Deus ex Machina 46, juni 1988. Het werd ook opgenomen in Gedichten 89, een keuze uit de tijdschriften door Hubert Van Herrreweghen en Willy Spillebeen, Davidsfonds, Leuven.

I forgot

Came into the world
without any doubt
came in floating
on a cloud

Cannot see the road
underneath the moon
oh I can't wait
please come soon

        Do you have a home
        do you sleep alone ?
         - oh oh I forgot
        Do you have a goal
        a mind all of your own ?
         - oh oh I forgot

Standing by the sea
looking at the sky
call my name and
tell me why

years have come and gone
you were always there
time is slow but
you don't care

      refr.

1973

Mary Quant would understand

Upstairs in my room
I'm a rock and roll star
downstairs in the gloom
I just listen to my ma
polishing the kitchen floor
I don't wanna hear no more

       I'm a rock'n roller
       one day I will show her
       now that's something Mary Quant
       would surely understand
       Mary Quant would understand

When I'm on the job
I just clean their cars
one day that will stop
I'll be a rock'n roll star
free and easy like a bird
singing songs mom never heard

         refr.

                 lose my head in royal beds
                 lose my mind leave it behind
                 lose my heart in foreign parts
                 now that's something Mary Quant
                 would surely understand
                 Mary Quant would understand


1988. Geschreven als de inzet van een weddenschap met Wim De Ridder (Wimmeke Punk, the Wolfbanes). Wij zaten zwaar te drinken in het café dat Walter Grootaers toen uitbaatte in Lier (Het Kruiske) en het ging erom om het eerst een song te schrijven met Mary Quant (sixties mode-icoon) in de titel. Toen ik tegen de ochtend zwaar aangeschoten naar huis reed stopte ik onderweg op de parking van een disco (nu is dat La Rocca) en schreef de tekst in één gulp. Thuisgekomen beld ik terug naar Het Kruiske, waar Wimmeke nog aan de toog zat en kondigde hem aan dat hij de weddenschap verloren had. Hij nam het sportief op en zette het nummer, zoals afgesproken, op de b-kant van hun volgende single, Together with you (CNR records). Hij vergat wel mijn naam op de plaat te vermelden, maar de auteursrechten heb ik eerlijk gekregen.

You must be asleep

Hey, are you alone up there in  heaven
or do others get to share your greed ?
life to you means watching television
disco dancing's all the exercise you need

     I know, mirrors light the love in your eyes
     oh, but that's no sin
     I could tell you things you'd never believe
     where do I begin ?

     Allright stop thinking
     of your heart as a goldmine
     all these feelings pure and fine

     You think happiness is a promise which
     life will surely keep
     I say, if you ain't got no problems
     you must be asleep

     you think of heaven like some place on earth
     where nobody weeps
     I say, if you ain't got no problems
     you must be asleep
     if you ain't got no problems
     you must be asleep

1989

Fortune-teller

Give me a place in your life
make me a space in your life
if you don't dear, if you won't
I know we both will die

         I'll see the fortune-teller
         my heart in my hands
         like some geiger-teller
         but she understands
         yes she understands

For years now I've been waiting
for a woman or a girl to free me
from the bondage and the hating
of someone that wasn't me

   refr.

For years now I've been falling
tumbling down an endless slope
I saw you, heard you calling
the voice, the cry of hope

    refr.

repeat first verse


1988

It's a girls' world

Dress me up in next to nothing
coach me for a longing pout
in a picture I look hot in
this is what it's all about

      It's a girls' world
      for calendar girls
      in a video whirl
      it's a girls' world

I will be your alibi
staying in or going out
I will be your bridge of sighs
this is what it's all about

      bridge: oh and it's a girls' world
                  hair all permed and curled
                  every female flag unfurled
                  over a girls' world

       refr.



1988

On the border (Sweet disorder)

You're so close
that I can't breathe
through mouth or nose
but only seethe

       with crazy longing
       all those feelings thronging
       on the border
       sweet disorder

you're so close
that I can't move
my hands and feet
are tied, it's proof

        of crazy longing etc.

You're so close
that I don't know
what I should do
if you should go

       oh crazy longing etc.    



1988. Door Jan V. op muziek gezet en verschenen of Ralph Samantha & the Medicine Men's CD uit 1993: Carnival of the heart

Love's assault

Darling, night is drowning me
in its sandman song of old
in it no single heart is broken
or if it is, I am not told

        and we all know it's a crime
        one gets caught out everytime
        'cause everybody knows
        there's no resisting
        love's assault

darling, night disowned me once
for no failure or no fault
or so I thought, but I was punished
for resisting love's assault

         refr.



1985. Op muziek gezet door Jan V.

Love stole me blind

Who'll say what hours and minutes mean
or houses, streets and countries ?
I cannot tell you 'cause since I've been
with you, I've had no peace

The stars, the coffee-grounds they say
we should act upon our dreams
we can't escape love anyway
it dooms while it redeems

       love stole me blind
       it took my time away
       love stole me blind
       it took my mind away
       so cruel and kind

time passes like a lifeless lie
colours pale and fade, then glow
just like the rainbows in your eyes
from which no tear should flow

       refr.

Who'll say what strife will signify
bringing out the best in us
so maybe we can pacify
the pain that's testing us

      refr.

1987. Door Jan V. op muziek gezet. Niet uitgebracht.

Mama Blue

So you were gonna be a genius
much better than the rest of us
shining bright like Halley's comet
anything I want, you've got it
but do you think I call it living
when you don't know a thing 'bout giving
one day I'll call your bluff
your smiles and wiles won't be enough

       'cause when  your heart
       stops telling you
       where to go and what to do
       you're gonna find it hard to
       get away from Mama Blue

So you have walked upon the water
talked to me like I's your daughter
counting all the frozen stars
and started living in the bars
but do you think I find it funny
when you sneer at me but call me honey
knowing you can't reach me now
there's nothing you can teach me
hey hey

     refr.

1985. Door Jan V. op muziek gezet en aan Lou Deprijck gepresenteerd voor Viktor Lazlo die er in de States een proefopname van maakte met de toenmalige Count Basie Orchestra. Het nummer haalde helaas de eindselectie voor haar album niet.

End of the world

We don't have to wait until the morning comes
we don't have to wait until we're both too drunk
we really shouldn't wait till all the cigarettes are gone
so come on come on
yeah baby hold on

we don't have to wait until the night's too old
we don't have to wait until the room's too cold
we really shouldn't need to have our fortunes told
when our hearts are sold
just like purest gold

         she was she was
         light-hearted and
         she was she was
         heavy-breasted and
         she said she was gonna be there
         at the end of the world
         right at the end of the world, yes !

we don't have to ponder this or even think
our bridges may be burned but still our ships won't sink
and we're both agreed we've had enough  to drink
since we've made the link
and our contract's inked 

       refr.

1983. Door Mark Bauwens en Jan V. op muziek gezet en met Urban Jungle opgenomen onder de titel "She was she was" voor een mini-CD eind jaren tachtig (Kafka Records)

The doctor is dead

Spend your stolen pennies
on some desert farm
count your kites in heaven
lest you come to harm

every open window
has a painted face
makes you think and long for
quite a diff'rent place

      the doctor is dead
      he saw the world exploding
      in and round his head
      now we'll drink to the morning
      'cause the doctor is dead

Read it in the paper
see it on the news
do it every day and
tell me you'll be true

lend your lease on life to
some forsaken clown
drink till your forget him
let your long hair down

       refr.

                   all his prescriptions
                   went to his head
                   no more prescriptions
                   the doctor is dead


1989

Faces alight

Heat and moisture make a day
of summer, nothing much to say
watch the people walking by
with the questions in their eyes

dresses lifting in the wind
enough to make you dream up sins
coming up with nice white lies
past the questions in your eyes

     and then she's more than what she seemed
     and then he's more than what he dreamed
     they are figures full of light
     their faces shine throughout the night
     faces alight
     faces alight

Sun in exclamation marks
and couples talking in the park
surely they can have no eyes
for the questions in the sky

life sends riddles through the mail
the answer is just your own tale
then the people walking by
have no questions in their eyes

      refr.


1989

River of you

I counted your curves
as they got on my nerves
I was feeling elated
wanting to be sated

            by the river of you
            deliver me to
            the river of you
            that's what you should do

I skimmed your wet skin
of sweat I wallowed in
I was feeling elated
I kept my breath bated

            refr.

I cringed in the wings
curtain calls of all things
I was feeling elated
mind and body mated

          refr.

1991

         

Until tomorrow goes

I will stare into the water (3x)
thinking of someone's daughter

      Until yesterday goes
      making way for today
      until tomorrow goes
      making way for today

I will dig tunnels way down deep (3x)
thinking of her still asleep

       refr.

I will wonder what the winds say (3)
whispering of you everyday

       refr.

I will gaze into the fire (3x)
knowing my life ain't for hire

      refr.

I will go and I will travel
seeing your life unravel


 refr.


1991

Inch by inch

I met your eyes across the room
I felt uncertain, a buffoon
you looked smooth and quite complete
I felt uncertain, can't compete

      and the lights were very bright
      they're bound to be on such a night

I ordered wine and cigarettes
I fantasized, dreamed we had met
somewhere long ago and safe
in some protected sweet enclave

     yes the lights were very bright
     they've got to be on such a night

          we drink what we drink
          while we think what we think
          and forget what we've seen
          also what we have been
          you the princess, me the prince
          making our own way inch by inch
          like a princess, like a prince
          inch by inch, yes inch by inch


1989

Night life

Their future's in their faces
their features foretell the races
that they'll run around the roses
it figures life must be all poses

          Night life for the barmaid
          is like a greasy table laid
          night life dim lights
          night life

They're clean-cut, up and coming
as they're going, so they're running
to the adventures to be met
somewhere beyond the neon sunset

           refr.

             coda: night life is staring
                       at someone else's navel
                        till you're no longer able


1988

Stolen kisses

Women full of self-defense and doubt
get kissed fully on the mouth
talk of stolen kisses
talk of hits and misses

      stolen kisses
      hits and misses
      let's go for the hits
      seeing we're no twits

come and tell me 'bout your breasts that droop
come and tell me 'bout your back that stoops
come and diddle my defenses
come unload my senses

        refr.

and so it's tenderness revisited
fellow traveller well met indeed
are we going anywhere ?
that's neither here nor there

       refr.

                   and it's lovely
                   you thinking of me
                   just like I do
                   my thinking of you


1990

Fear of life

When the season lies
it's up to you to go and try
to see a straighter way
to a richer better day
it feels as if you were betrayed
then look somewhere else
or go look within yourself

       go into a trance
       see the leaves and flowers dance
       the fear and dread of death
       is like the fear of life
       ideals and blind romance
       are like the fear of life

When your lover leaves
it may just mean you were naive
you cheat and cheat yourself
and so you're left upon the shelf
when the urge fades
you go and leave the bed unmade
and you drink too much
tell yourself you're out of touch

       refr.


1990

       

Less is more

I'm tired of handing out
all this understanding about
everybody else's feeling
their underhanded double-dealing

I'm tired of standing around
looking for something never found
all my wishes and desires
burning up like futile fires

        under the moon
        under the stars
        that never ever
        told me where we are
        or what we're for
        knocking at the door
        of less is more

I'm sick of waiting for
something that surely comes no more
when all the tears are cried and dried
the heart's forgotten how to fly

I'm sick of going down
like any masochistic clown
everybody else is feeling
an underhanded double-dealing

       refr.


1990

Verdwijnkunde

Ik leerde en probeerde
mij te verbergen in de woorden
en de zinnen en toen dat lukte
en ik dacht perfect verdwenen te zijn
was ik plotseling zeer zichtbaar
en elkeen kwam mij vinden.


19/02/2011

Memphis

Angels spread the bed
dogs bark in the fog
the woman waits within
the questions in my head
they're like timber, they're like logs
while the woman waits within

       soon I'll be in Memphis
       laying out the cards
       and I'll never ever
       stop to wonder who you are
       in Memphis

The guards ain't that hard
tho' not really merry
the woman waits within
the questions in my heart
they're just like boats, like ferries
while the woman waits within

       refr.

She says what should be
and what should be done
the woman that's within
the questions that are me
they're just like moons, and like suns
while the woman waits within

     refr.

1990

On your own

I wanna say
what's on my mind
we've been in hiding
for too long a time

     and it's still such a long way
     before you're home
     a mighty long way
     before you're home
     and I pity you
     you've got to make it
     on your own

but it's not easy
when you're all alone
to be talking to someone
who's just hanging 'round
   
     refr.


1990

Nothing is lost in the mind

I walked miles upon thin ice
I had dreams of paradise
you fled high and you fled low
but you always let me know

                   all we think hidden or dead
                   we'll find in our hearts or our heads
                   all you thought lost you may find
                   'cause nothing is lost in the mind
                   nothing is lost
                   nothing is lost
                   nothing is lost in the mind

Now you're distant, then you're near
phantom song inside my ears
I was itching with the cold
but time and time again I'm told

                   refr.

Oh the circus don't make sense
no beginning and no end
fantasies about the pain
only tell you once again

                 refr.


1990
  

Life is waiting for the pain

She glistens in the sunshine
she's to be someone else's wife
I'm not invited to the wedding
someone's sure to throw a knife

     Life is waiting for the pain
     and you wonder why you came
     everyday is just the same
     life is waiting for the pain

At the old railway station
a witch woman reads your fortune
deserts, things you learn on planes
stare at the hills in the sun

       refr.

Wash and change before you go
but just then her brothers find you
you hear a song from way back when
while you wonder what they'll do

      refr.


1989. Door Ludo Mariman vaak gebracht in zijn duo-sets met Gert Van Rompaey

Lap of luxury

As I sit here in the darkness
with a glass of wine
I'm uneasy and I'm telling
all the beads of time

I remember and dismember
what we used to know
all of heaven, some of hell
all our life on show

       I was deep into you
       when you held on to me
       I knew I had come to
       the lap of luxury
       one thing is true so true
       yours was the lap of luxury

As I scan the far horizon
armies on the march
my collar still hangs loose 'cause
it will take no starch

repeat 2nd verse
  
        refr.

                  the lap of luxury
                  spanned all the centuries
                  for you and me


1989.

In the nick of time

If war is the answer
then what on earth was the question
sometimes some things are true
and the point of any lesson
is knowing this is good for you
if war is your answer
then who on earth put the question ?

        I went to the carnival
        I felt distant, I felt fine
        alienation, hesitation,
        but then laughter saved us all
        in the nick of time
        laughter broke right through the wall
        in the nick of time


If love is the outcome
then what on earth was the problem
we all come in disguise
causing havoc, causing mayhem
still the old question does arise
if love is the outcome
then what on earth was your problem ?

     refr.

              sing the jester, sing the clown
              London Bridge may well fall down
              we'll be jesters, we'll be clowns


1989.
   

Flogging a dead horse

You're just like every woman
that I've met along the track
the sun shines when I come to you
it rains when I drive back

         but I'm feeling nothing like remorse
         that's like flogging a dead horse
         oh sweet darling I ain't
         flogging a dead horse

Oh yes I caught your signals
felt the pressure on my heart
but what we had just won't come back
no time for a new start

        refr.


1989.

Charm of nothing

Questions are all I need
accusations are the devil's feed
wine and women and a song
forgetfulness and then some

Answers are what we fear
complications always oh so near
wine and women and a song
remembrance yes and then some

         Stumbling round on crutches
         cursing all she touches
         till she knows how much is
         crumbling as she clutches
                it in the arms of nothing
                with the charm of nothing

Slogans are deadly creeds
exclamations never ever freed
wine and women and a song
from the void but not for long

           refr.


          coda/bridge

                         still since the day that we have met
                         I've missed you like a smoker does his cigarette
                         or like a drinker does his brandy
                         or a sweet tooth does his candy


1988.

Blustery airplane piece and Carolina memories

During the 5 hour stopover in Seoul they put me on a bus for a tour of the city. We were taken to a restaurant were they served us the Korean classics, that is, of course, mainly kim-chee, a spicy cabbage dish, and I realised immediately why the Japanese call the Koreans "ninniku-jin" (garlic people). I happened to be the only westerner in a group of Japanese. And I kept thinking; was it only last week, was it only last night, this morning even ? All these scenes like frozen carvings or luminous netsuke holograms in my memory, my mind, are they not possessions as well ? And do they impoverish me or enrich me, I'm afraid I don't know. Another lot of images to go by, to deduct from, to maybe shape future conduct and behaviour, feelings and decisions. New people, dear ones, but only there for a couple of weeks or even days and then probably never to be seen again, never to be talked to or touched. A buddhist I once talked to in Northern Thailand counseled me to stop traveling, to stop accumulating more experiences and sensations, to turn inward and digest and wipe out all these accretions and thus gain deliverance. Well I wonder because somehow I have this hunch that one has just as hard a time when one is digesting one or in any case few experiences or going on and on and tackling the whole gamut of them. After all, any emotion at all deeply felt is bound to touch on all compass-points of the "soul", a word I use for lack of an apter one. So whether you try to fathom one of them or all of them, you're always up against the same mystery, bound to be overwhelmed by the very same awe. So carry on.

So at that point he asked her if she would like to hear a song. She said yes please and settled back in her chair, her knees drawn up to her chin en her arms around them. He took the guitar that unfortunately lacked the first string and that hadn't been played for a very long, long time. He could sense this, and of course the thick layer of dust on its big body and neck told its own story of neglect. He strongly felt instruments shouldn't be left unplayed like that, uncared for in some closet. Still he played her one of his simple songs with intricate lyrics and at the end said, it's called Nothing World and you could say it's a buddhist song in a way. He felt slightly nervous and self-conscious. This usually happened when he played for someone. The evening was cold and he shivered while lighting a cigarette.
They had sat in silence for close on five minutes when he asked "Can you hear the sizzling night ?" After some more silence she said "Yes, I guess that's what it does."
So they sat by the wood-and-paper sliding-doors and listened. He was not nervous now and his cigarette had long been extinguished. Now you may think their minds were racing but, really, they thought of nothing in particular. For all kinds of interlocking reasons this was a very happy night for them. It was another case of just carrying on and the odds were in their favour .
Hours before they had met for the first time in a Kyoto jazz club were they were thrown together in a group of people and got to talking. At a very early point in their half-shouted conversation she said "If we have breakfast together ..." and then her voice trailed off in the noisy surroundings. That, and her remarkable attractiveness, quite made him sit up and as the evening and the drinking went on the story emerged. It turned out she had been studying kimono-making for nearly two years here and she had done it the hard way, that is under a Japanese sensei who really believed in old-style discipline which means that for instance the first months you do nothing but sweep the courtyard and carry out the garbage so to speak. This is a test of your determination as a real master doesn't want to waste his time with hobbyists or amateurs. All instruction was of course in Japanese so there was more study but she progressed and was kept on her toes with more and more intricate techniques and for the last months she had been working round the clock on a book about Japanese textile design. So there really was no time for any kind of social life and she had even lost touch with the extensive expat community in Kyoto. So that evening when she decided on going out she had looked in the mirror and said, this is 16 months I've swotted and sweated  and for all that time I haven't touched a man; this is about to change tonight. So that evening she sized up the field and finally ran into someone just over on a holiday and about to leave in a week, i.e. no way this little fling was going to complicate her life as an affair with someone living local would have done. And he turned out to be the lucky one although of course it was complicated. A woman who's been alone that long and who has to drink a lot to get her courage up is quite something to bed. There's great theatricals and a lot of shoulds and shouldn'ts but as shown before it turned out well for both parties concerned. Just the drunken ride home on her bike with me wearing a borrowed helmet and being taunted by the bozozuki (motorcycle hooligans Japanese style) was a comic strip adventure in itself. Oh Carolina !

In the departure lounge trying to buy some cigarettes I got it straight from Korean television. I couldn't understand a bloody word of course but one thing stood out like the sorest thumb you could ever come across: it was HIM allright. They were showing stills of an aunt-faced B-movie actor at various stages of his very moving and truly inspiring career. Right, it is fucking Reagan after all. My features must have conveyed such unadulterated disgust that several Japanese and Koreans standing close by were visibly taken aback. I turned away abruptly and made my sad way to the upstairs bar in order to get pissed. On the American channel of Korean TV they had some kind of beauty pageant; the Miss Universe swimsuit competition. All the meat was called up piecemeal to say a few words to the American M.C. who deftly managed  to treat them each to some bafflingly stupid macho put-down at the end of their little exchange. The panel of judges was presented to the enthusiastic audience. A number of slick fat men done up in expensive suits and dirt-cheap smiles, with the token woman thrown in for good measure. So here goes folks. Here's miss Iceland, she's 19 years old, she has brown hair and green eyes, she weighs 118 pounds and she's 5 feet 9 inches tall. There's a human being for you. So feast your eyes and the old dormitory rule that bids you keep your hands above the bedcovers is waived. So the long night wears on. The election and the swimsuit competition for heaven's sake, what's the difference anyway. Both of them seem to be won by being as bland as you can possibly get away with and sucking up to the right people in the right places. If only it didn't burn out your brain you could just carry on. But this is Korea right ? The guy from Korean Airlines who drove me to the Hyatt Regency once after I've wheedled a free night out of them on a different journey, told me his was a good country, it's a democracy, just like America, he said. Well, no going that one better, right ? And if you ask them about this whole place out there on the streets they're bound to wax lyrical or at least quite positive about the whole set-up here. But talk to them in private if it can be done. I'm sure they're fed up with it all but it's hard to go and open your mouth when you're shaking in your boots. Ask Kim Dae Jung.  At this very moment the bastards are frantically busy trying to figure out just how bad it's gonna look if they off him. They're dying to know just how much flak they're gonna catch if they go and bump him off. Right, but now here's miss Sweden, swinging a mean tit for all you innocents out there, so get with it, drool. And you can bet your sweet ass they're quite prepared  to take a LOT of flak to get Kim Dae Jung out of their hair, an awful lot. Just imagine, here's this guy who actually dared to talk back, even tho' in muted tones, who actually had the bloody cheek to try and put the whole militaristic rigmarole into some kind of perspective. Like that's just about unnatural, right, against the heaven-ordained order of things, order, there's the rub, right ? Someone who couldn't agree 300 % (and that's the least these bloodsucking bastards will accept) so he's better off dead and all the little children can rest easy, they won't be strangled in their teeny weeny cots by that lunatic Kim Dae Jung. Oops, did I just miss out on miss America's gorgeous ass disappearing offstage, god how these petty political musings distract you from what really matters. But not again, better get set for miss Thailands 's pearly belly button. Let's get down to serious businesss, pass the kleenex folks and kindly look the other way. How's that for carrying on ?

These beauty pageants, these Playboy magazines, Penthouse, the tits and ass that sell cars and cigarettes and chewing-gum, the lot, don't they present you with a riddle ? They did me I tell you, I used to endlessly ruminate on the question where they got these unreal women from, these girls that try to turn your bowels to water and succeed as often as not. But don't look too closely because when you do you'll find they're all the same and no matter how much their sex-appeal is played up they seem so cold and from one mould and I know just why that is. If you can take it I will tell you tho' I don't know if it's going to help you any as I don't even know if it did me. But then of course let nothing bar the pursuit of pure knowledge just for knowledge's sake. It's Howard Hughes all over again. We, civilisation in general that is, haven't finished with this aviator yet, not by a long shot. You know there's a legendary plane nearly eternally airborne. There's an awful lot more to it than just that silly escapade, there has to be. It's simple, you can't just endlessly fly around and drink, be merry, sleep and count clouds, play scrabble or read comics, you want to work for your keep and even if fortune has put itself out for you in ways that make labour superfluous you still want to feel useful or keep the bucks rolling in just for the hell of it. So old Howard and his cronies in the think-tank came up with the perfect scheme and science pitched in for all it was worth (and we all know what old Howard was worth, right) As you know it is all men up in that plane, and boys being boys and dirty minds being joys forever, the guys in control decided to to take it from there. Here's how it works, I won't bother you with the technical side of it all, being of a rather simple turn of mind myself in that respect. They came up with the masturbatron, a steel and glass contraption where all the male fantasies of all continents and ages are stored and by processes I can't fathom they're turned into semi-sentient holograms that eventually roll onto a pink silk assembly line where the ultimate fantasy spectrum is generated to later on be set down at conveniently isolated airports from which these new creatures, hot and raring to go, are let loose on an unsuspecting but quite expectant planet. Hence these pageants and scintilating magazines.

So I finally get on the plane, pissed out of my brain and considerately pissed off. Now these people on an interncontinental flight do really stay with it. The tele's on and it's Reagan all the way of course. The corpse is smiling and they've hit on a way to make him gesture quasi lively. Perhaps they let him have a closer look at the masturbatron. Here's to the decrepit and the maimed, the knackered in body, the shattered of brain; their man is in now for the harvest. Have a missile man, knock yourself out on an ICBM wet dream. You just can't help but feel that they're gonna come awfully cheap. And here's this bunch of people quietly sorting out their seating arrangements. I bend over some young kid, slightly freaky-looking "You American man ? ", "I am Danish", very polite. "Fucking Reagan took it man" Very cultured smile, apologetic, like, don't blame him, right ? I mean, who gives a shit these days ? So I stumble on, gotta find my seat, right ? I know I got one in the bowels of this flying rabbit-hutch. Black guy's occupying my window-seat. OK, none of that discrimination shit, so I tell him he's in my seat and he moves "Fucking Reagan, man", "Yeah, how the hell can they do it ? Sorry 'bout taking your seat, man". So there's the victorious mummified factotum of middle-class futility gone berserk saluting the masses, bloody muppet gone clean out of control. Sleets of shit coming down a mile a minute and don't it frighten these people ? Well no, we're on the Paris flight and it's mainly French tourists who'd only get upset if the wine was slightly off. What's it to them ? They've got the Eiffel-tower, the Tour de France and De Gaulle's legacy of baguette greatness so they're happy as pigs in shit. Oh, and you want me to carry on. Good. I will. But can I please smash something, just some haphazard harmless little bit of careless violence maybe. Dance to the tune of the times, so to speak. Wakarimashita ! I ...will...carry on, but if ever there was a case of well-meaning people, harmless little fuck-ups, being left in the lurch, holding the baby, well this is the primordial case of it not just being twins or triplets, no, this is beyond quadruplets, it's goddamn quintuplets we've got stuck with this time. But carry on, right ? Carry on. If I must.



I had ended up in Zacbaran that night, a jazz-joint in the northern part of town on Marutamachi. It was the first time I went there on my own and of course I managed to get lost after getting out at Kumano-jinja, the nearest crossroads. Well I got there anyway, none the worse for wear and ready for some action, like it's saturday night, right ? Sat down at a table near the piano and I'd hardly been there a couple of minutes when Barry and Billy stumble in. Beer everybody and how is everybody ? At this point, in walks this French pick-up artist with three girls in tow, really scored big tonight. Another case of biting off more than you can chew, but wait, let's just see if there might not be something for little old us there. Barry, pretty drunk by now - have we seen this before somehow ? - stumbles over to the little group by the counter who are obviously at a loss about where to sit as the place is quite packed as per usual. So they come and sit with us. I know none of the girls but I don't want the French guy to sit down next to me so I manoeuver in such a way that the most attractive woman sits by me. So now I'm on my own and hanging in there for all I'm worth. Still, I got spared most of the normal effort because as it happens it was she doing the hunting and I just fit the description. So we got to talking, the usual give and take, the customary banter but with just the right measure of wit thrown in. The right measure being all you can come up with, all you can bloody well get away with, but going on past experience not counting on anything, not placing any bets, for once just going with the flow, not caring, just enjoying the moment, her good looks and feeling happy about the fine conversation and the kind of underlying understanding that we both want the same thing. So we're just five minutes into our ritual dance, into our personal currency exchange and she's been telling me about her being a textile designer and studying the whole kimono designing process with a sensei and how she worked for a whole year in a textile factory for paltry wages just to get the hang of what the whole thing was about. So I tell her I don't know anything about this and that the technical terms she's using are way above my head when she tells me that maybe if we have breakfast together she can show me some samples so I'd understand more about it. But this is after midnight so there's an awful lot more here than meets the eye and I can hardly believe what's happening to me and Barry, who's been hanging in there on the fringe of our discussion, suddenly seems to realise this is going to be MY night, not his, so he gets ready to split being more than normally drunk by now.
Carolina asks me if I've got a motorcycle, and if not, can I borrow a helmet to come with her on hers. So I tell Barry to put his spare helmet in the basket of the little blue Honda 75 parked left of the entrance. He promises he will but insists on me paying his bill in exchange, there just ain't no free lunch in this world is there ?
I ask Carolina if she wants more hot sake but she refuses as she's not used to drink. "I'm drinking now, but that's because I felt I was cracking up. I've been here for nearly two years but I never go out. I didn't even know this place existed. I avoid foreigners you know, the only contact I've got here is with Japanese, and well, I've come to wonder whether that's contact at all, the way we understand it." "They're hard to get close to in a personal way, I know." "You tell me... but I love Japan, I'm passionately in love with this place. It's great, but the fact that I'm cracking up now, isn't that crazy ?" "Well, love-hate relationships with Japan are not as uncommon as all that." "I know, I know, it's all so intricate but I don't know how much longer I can take it, I might be here for another two years, and after all I've got this book to write, but then I might be off next month, I just don't know any more." "Why didn't you go out and mix with foreigners to ease the pressure somewhat ?" "I don't know, well I do know, who wants to go out and be talked into bed by the first drooling gai-jin who happens along, but in a way that's why I came out tonight. I just felt I couldn't take another saturday night at home, working, working, burning out my brains or what's left of them, over my book.
Suddenly, the table halfway topples because Barry's popped up again, the awful genie strikes again, he's tried to lean on our table confidentially and there go half of the glasses and bottles. He's off in a flash and we are left to take stock of the damage. Now everyone's heading for an all-night disco and to my chagrin Carolina decides we have to go along as she hasn't been out for ages so she feels she really has to make a night of it. So it's paytime, stumbling outside time, loiter in the street time, motorcycle talk time. Everybody's got a bike and all the guys usually carry spare helmets in case they get lucky. Why no cars, you'll ask. When you buy a car here you've got to prove you've got somewhere to park it and there's little or no space for that except when you live out in the country, but that's impractical for most foreigners. The streets in old Kyoto are so narrow they're nearly all one way so no parking there. You might secure a place in some neighbourhood parking lot but that costs an arm and a leg and there's rarely any places free anyway. So a lot of the talk revolves around bike makes, flash helmets, leather gear, mileage to the gallon and gas ripped off by local teenage gangs. All this does not interest me at all so I'm just patiently standing around smiling ingratiatingly and praying to be off.
Luckily Carolina's bike is small and not very fast because I'm usually afraid on the back of the bigger machines of my friends who of course know this and like nothing better than swerving in and out of the busy downtown traffic and making U-turns like there's no tomorrow with me praying to make it home alive. So we're heading back south with Billy in the lead on his powerful Kawasaki playfully speeding ahead in order to wait for us at the next junction, he does this repeatedly until his bike breaks down on Sanjo so we walk from there with Carolina pushing her little bike along. We're crossing the bridge in the direction of Maruyama Park when who come roaring up but the bozozuki (Japanese motorcycle hoodlums), firing their engines like crazy and generally creating a terrible racket. They really get me on edge and I keep muttering, Stupid cunts, ah ya cunts, fuck off, fuck off,  when Carolina turns on me and really gives me a piece of her mind "Why do you say that, why should you use that word in such a derogatory sense, it's a vital part of my anatomy which we're about to enjoy and you use it as a goddamn curse, you've got no right on earth to do that, it's so goddamn sexist !" And of course she's right, so many things that just roll off our tongues so easily have that sexist slant, you're not even conscious of it but it's there as a symbol of totally biased thinking and then someone steps in and rubs your nose in it. And I look at Carolina's face and it's like caleidoscopic, like it's countless faces and this is not the drink talking but infatuation. When you first fall for someone they have so many faces, later when you're used to them they have their one face that's convenient to you. Familiarity seems to rule out the multitude of faces  and maybe true love is the acceptance and continued openness to someone else's multitude of faces.


OK. Take-off time. You've been there: twinkling glowworms fading in the oriental twilight. Allright, so you're up in the air. Grab a magazine - what have they got ? Time and Newsweek of course. The game is rigged. Just open one of them rags and the shit, the fathomless river of fragrant faeces hits you like a ton of bricks and I tell you, it doesn't even take reading between the lines. It takes no genius, no special perspicacity to see what's going on here. As long as you have not yet turned into a complete machine, into a godforsaken, blindly comsummating robot, some semi-stillborn brainwashed idiot you can see it spelled out plainly here. It's not even a case of some obscure writing on the wall that takes a religious bent in the reader's mind for it to properly come across, no it's fucking plastered across the bleeding sky, it's written all over the moon, the sea , the trees, all over defaced mother nature's countenance; the game is rigged from start to finish, it's a set-up, it's a stake-out and the control, the manipulation, the rape of language, the semantic assault, the disfigurement of feeling and what little wholesomeness is left isn't slackened for a goddamn split second and you can't even cry anymore, you can't even cry ... but, hang on, back to the oracle of western independent thought ... it seems that in East-Germany (another police-state that, but are there any others ?) they are putting up a statue for Frederick the Great. But it fits, it fits, 'cause call it capitalism, call it communism, call it christianity or esoteric buddhism, call it tourism for all I care, who is it calls the shots love ? The shots that so cruelly get in amongst you and leave you helpless at the psychiatrist's door, on the goddamn priest's threshold, the bloody welfare center's upholstered chair, deathrow's wooden bench, who set up the unholy hierarchy that puts certain people and institutions in a position to call the shots and trample all over the rest in a trance of religious observance, political subservience ? A manipulated press, a system of law that perpetuates the square root of status quo, all that endless parade of dog eat dog where individual responsibilities go down the drain ? It's THEM. Them of course, OK but as I'm too drunk now to be coherent and pinpoint the heart of the matter where we all are kept in a daze of cheap but heartfelt beliefs, opinions and the lot so that it is fairly impossible to focus your rage and therefore it's off to another football game for us, another miss Swimsuit competition to jack off to, another presidential election, another shot of heroin, another senseless murder. And your personal integrity and decision-making process is all out of kilter. Well you've been there and back and you've despaired and you were damn right to do so, how the hell can you carry on ?
Well I will, as I must, but on whose terms ? Mine ? I'll have to spell them out in my own sweet time and confused and disorientated as I am I don't know if I'm frightened of death or not. Are you ? I had to ask myself the question as suddenly we hit an area of extreme turbulence and I could see that even the stewardesses looked frightened and totally upset as I kept ordering more booze and knocking it back with obvious pleasure. As we kept dropping into one air-pocket after another and luggage and stuff was flying around I realized I couldn't give a monkey's toss if we made it or not, and believe me, there's freedom for you.


Carolina and me met up in the center of town and had a drink together. She wanted to take me to Heian Jingu, a big Shinto shrine that was built as late as 1895. As we walked through the truly impressive red entrance gate (torii) she told me it was one of the biggest in the whole of Japan and I didn't find it hard to believe her, as it was really huge. The grounds are extensive and the immense front courtyard is covered in some kind of white sand. We strolled through the gardens and then she showed me a building were there were all kinds of alcoves with live-size dolls of court ladies of old. They were covered in layer upon layer of colourful kimono and Carolina explained that the number of kimono and the quality of the material used determined these women's status. She gave me a lot of technical details that I did of course forget nearly instantly but the pleasure of her company largely compensated for my unfamiliarity with her profession. We were in that befuddled state were you tell each other all kinds of things from your past, sometimes in hope of finding a certain common ground. In the course of all this I found myself recalling and telling her a story that I had rarely shared with anyone else and hadn't thought about in years and years. Sometime in 1967 I had written a totally off-the-wall surrealistic piece of free association prose full of weird images of which I now recall only the picture of our Belgian king peddling oranges from a barrow in a busy marketplace. I had taken the piece with me to a beat and hippy hangout in order to review it I guess and what with one thing and another I forgot the folder with my piece in the pub when I left for home. There it was found by Jos De Hert brother of now famous Belgian film-maker Robbe De Hert. Robbe was not as well-known then as he is today, no it was Jos who stood out as that year he had won first prize at the then renowned Film Festival of Oberhausen in Germany. So Jos was considered one of the great white hopes of Belgian moviemaking and after reading my piece he decided he wanted to get to know me in order to turn it into a movie, or at least that was what he told the barman who kept the piece until I came asking for it the next day. He gave me a card with Jos' address and told me to contact him forthwith. I felt very flattered and proud and then never did anything about it. I never even mentioned it to Jos when we crossed each other in the street and as he didn't know me personally he never identified me as the author of the piece. Now, why did I do that, or rather not do that ? My mother once told me she thought I had a combination of a superiority and inferiority complex and said that was at the root of a lot of my problems and I guess she was right to some extent. Anyway, these were heady days of drugs and music and I believe that Jos took one acid trip too many, joined the children of god and later slipped into a relative obscurity. Carolina refrained from comment and just hugged me and we made our way over lovely Kyoto's beautiful little side-streets. The whole city is laid out as a rectangular grit of streets with grand avenues in geometrical patterns crisscrossing so it's not easy to get lost there as you can always refer to these big crossings that are all over the place from north to south and east to west. At that time there was a rumour that even David Bowie had a house in Kyoto and that he sometimes was seen in rock joints etcetera. We all thought it plausible, as who would not want to live in sweet Kyoto, which was long called Heian Kyo by the way.


So I wake up as we're closing in on Anchorage and my sweet yesterday is lightyears away and I am nearly seized by sheer panic. I keep seeing images of myself acting and talking as if through an endless tunnel and it makes me feel infinitesimally small and the universe's message, its all-pervading motto, its slogan of ultimate futility is like a slap in the face once more. Like waking up of a morning and being crushed by the bleak weight of another uphill day of nothingness. Like lying in the dark beside your lover and still feeling miles away as if you were dangling, trussed up over a black abyss of space and time in an heartbreaking loneliness that I can't come near to describe, as if you were teetering on the ultimate edge of yourself over a cosmic void of dead silence. From high up in the aisles, the cheapest seat in a collosal stadium you get to peer down on a worn-out stage to watch your own performance as protagonist in the god and man game, the good and evil imbroglio, the whole neurotic gig all over again. Do you think you'd like to boo or applaud at that very moment when you can no longer carry on, when all notions of internal volition and external coercion merge and you cannot possibly go on ? Maybe you can spare a last thought then for the futility of human suffering and the statuesque grandeur of single humans displaying the ultimate courage of their flying in the teeth of it all for fleeting love and enduring compassion, their little nests in the eye of the storm, their heartrending small kindnesses and affection that assume monumentality in the face of the goddamn ages of whoredom and general sell-out, the cheapskating that is rife and which is hailed as progress and growth. Honour their endeavours then and file offstage with whatever dignity life hast left you.
And dazed and bewildered I stumbled out of the plane into the Anchorage transit zone with its huge stuffed polar bear in its glass cage and I gave the Hitler salute to the customs officers muttering Hail Reagan and frankly speaking I'm glad they realised I was halfway crazed with drink and travel fatigue, so they took pity and didn't arrest me for contempt or something. Then some whispy creature comes and sits down next to me while slurping cup noodles and desperately trying to talk to me in a language I cannot possibly place, all I can see is its urge to communicate and at the same time the complete impossibility of any meaningful exchange. Intercontinental travel and its strange treats and mysteries.



After our visit to the Heian Shrine, we made our way to another part of town in order to visit Nijo-jo (castle), former residence of the Shogun, or military leaders of Japan for 300 years. Hand in hand we ambled around the gardens and for the umpteenth time I reflected upon the earthiness of so much of Japanese architecture, although, as you'll see later, Nijo-jo is perhaps not the best example of what I'm getting at. Time and again in Japan I was struck, and sometimes awestruck, by the compact aesthetic of the combination of gardens and buildings, the wooden walkways and elegant bridges outside shrines, temples and houses overlooking tempting ponds and artfully composed rock formations that in all their artificiality still seemed to breathe the utter simplicity of nature's own fashionings. This artificiality can really go extremely far in Japan. One autumn I spied upon a team of gardeners in their white tabi (a kind of sock with splayed toes, that can be worn outside) sweeping up the fallen leaves from beneath a deciduous tree and then putting them back in a more artful pattern, which, according to them, was more pleasing to the eye and an improvement on nature's clumsy ways. I mean, you really gotta hand it to them.
Countless times I sat in small nooks and crannies around shrines and gardens and got lost completely in the refined harmonious simplicity and beauty arrived at with such a degree of contrivance and feeling. You can also see this in the narrow Kyoto streets where lots of people have front gardens no bigger than 1 or 2 square yards where, with some moss, a bamboo stalk or two and a few rocks, they manage perfectly to capture a sort of essence of the Japanese aesthetic and its incredible impact. They often made me stop and think, very impressive indeed.
We entered the actual castle, which by European standards isn't all that big, considering it used to house the rulers of the land. One of its interesting features is the phenomenon of the "whistling" floors (I would say they squeeked rather than whistled) to prevent prowling assasins bent on taking the shogun's life from getting near him as they would be betrayed by the sounds coming from the floorboards that no amount of artful stalking could suppress. This is the architecture of power and its private fears. Nijo-jo is built on a relatively human scale as most Japanese buildings are, but even so it too tells the story of all power achitecture. With some English friends I once visited Noyons cathedral. That also isn't all that grand or gigantic but in the flat Picardy landscape it conveys its message clearly. I walked around in it and liked it in a way but as in all these buildings I get this melancholy feeling of suppression. It's not as inhuman as the buildings in the Vatican or the Ceaucescu monstrosities but as all spectacle architecture it was put up with the main incentive to tell the world's poor and downtrodden that that is exactly what they are compared to the rulers of the realm: sheer dispensable nothing or canon-fodder when worst comes to worst. It's a paradox that so many of the superior buildings that indeed inspire awe and wonder were built as a grand salute to the gigantic ego of those who commissioned them rather than as a contribution to beauty that they often also are. And the slaves or underpaid workers who built them were also intended to be the admiring and totally submissive public. Of course I am aware of the fact that a lot of the medieval cathedrals like the one in Antwerp for example were also a result of the labours of the local guilds who were proud to be part of the project that established an emerging class of city entrepreneurs, but still it was also a part of the all-embracing religious culture of the time and please don't get me started on organized religion or I might just go totally ballistic.
Carolina referred to the hierarchical structure of the Japanese language where you usually talk either "up" or "down" to people, where there is a form reserved for women only, very humble of course, or hadn't you guessed. There are also at least three different modi for one and the same expression; colloquial, polite and super-polite. Some of this leads to funny breaches of the code, for instance when you want to say me or I you use "watashi", and tough men say "boku", now if you hear a woman use "boku" (and it happens occasionally) you may draw the obvious conclusion. Carolina, who is Australian, claimed that in her country language was more democratic and everyone spoke in the same manner. But when I hear it I always have trouble with the accent and I still prefer the queen's English although that again is an exponent of a rigid hierarchical class structure.
Carolina and I decided to call it a day and made for her house where we promised each other to strictly stick to egalitarian body language.

And I was on that endless plane-ride, two hours to go till Paris, and I was like fluff, I was pollen, I had dissolved. Maybe it was just my being worn-out by the time-zones, the intermittent twilight areas, maybe it was the beer, the whiskey, the red and white wine with the unspeakably shitty food that did me in. But it felt so good and at the same time so terribly bad, and I had the sensation of being eternally sheltered in that cramped economy-class window-seat with the piss churning in my bladder and the ashtray filling up and overflowing. I felt like crying but it was a rather mixed bag of emotions prodding me. Here I am 31 years old, I have by no means seen it all but I sure put in a lot of watching from the sidelines and yes, from the trenches too and of course I spit on the vile triviality of the show, the tragedy, the comedy we are all going through hand in hand and far apart at the same time, separated by these borders, these opinions and convictions that seem so insuperable but what can I say ? This moment I am not just loathing, I am love, all liquid love, I'm not just all hatred of the deprivation, the ruin; I find myself treasuring some fucking rune saying "wholesome" - go grab it boy, take a flying fuck at the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - and carry on, ya silly little bugger, carry on and hang in there.
So I made my way to the toilet and as I stood there casually holding my prick with my right hand while steadying myself with my left and squirting away, I was all of a sudden racked with sobs and the tears, but all too few of them, flowed freely. That hardly ever happens to me, I daresay it's a rather rare occurence with most men my age, our upbringing and messed-up outlook on things gainsay us that release, that ephemeral relief. So if somebody could have seen me there, member dangling, back hunched against the sobs and blindly groping for some toilet paper to dry my eyes and face they might have averted their eyes in vicarious shame or rushed to my side to offer comfort, never realizing that I felt wrapped like a baby in my bittersweet mixture of sadness and rapture and was in no need of consolation. I was weeping beauty and sadness, I cried love and dislike, the conglomerates of the soul, the only true signposts of the heart and as the spell subsided and I flushed the toilet - they run that icky blue chemical solution down them - I caught my reflection in the mirror and I saw a piece of tissue had got stuck in the corner of my right eye near the bridge of my nose. I gingerly removed it and looked at my flushed and dishevelled face and for that moment at least, I found peace with myself. After that, back in my seat, I drank more wine and the steward serving me looked at me quizzically noticing my red, wet eyes, then looked away. I toasted his back, but not Reagan's.




We were walking by the Kamo river near Carolina's house and as the weather was so balmy for the time of the year I said it was a nice and soft day whereupon she hugged me tightly and whispered I used such gentle expressions, as long as I didn't start cursing of course. We made our way to a small local supermarket and many people seemed to know her in that neighbourhood. Now foreigners, or gai-jin, as the Japanese call us, always stand out of course and their every move is usually commented on intensively by the local gossips. Carolina, working in a nearby textile factory and studying with a well-known kimono master and generally keeping a low profile as well as speaking quite reasonable Japanese must have had a good reputation there. But in thrall to our little conflagration of passion she rather threw all customary caution to the wind and after buying some whiskey she wanted to toast me right then and there in public, so I drank with her and from the corner of my eyes I could see people staring and I'm sure this wasn't doing her standing in the community any good. So I gently hustled her out of there and made it to her house as quickly as possible. We ate and drank and talked and I played her some music but somehow during the evening the mood changed and she suddenly insisted I sleep in her workshop rather than let me share her futon for that night and whatever I said that was it. I pleaded she couldn't just switch me on and off like a light but no amount of reasoning helped so I was left to sleep and ruminate all by myself and I mused on the many strange women I had met in Japan. Many girls coming to Japan suffer from exagerated bouts of Japanophilia where they really think this is the perfect place to end all perfect places. I once took an American woman home who claimed there was absolutely no crime in Japan. I was flabbergasted and asked her what about the yakuza, the officially recognized Japanese gangster syndicates who have actual offices in all the big cities and who parade their criminal identity quite openly. To give you an example, I was once driving in a friend's car through the narrow streets of Kyoto's inner city pleasure quarters when we came upon a huge American car blocking the road and being guarded by an ominous looking type. We waited and waited until I asked my friend why he didn't blow his horn or get out to enquire what the matter was but he just said , "Look behind us, and then take another look at the car blocking the road." Behind us was a long row of cars, some of the drivers got out of their cars, moved on up to take stock of the situation, then moved back to their cars and did nothing. I looked at the car in front of us again and suddenly twigged, this was the case of a yakuza-boss hopping into one of his bars or hostess-clubs to deal with something and he certainly wasn't going to be bothered with looking for a parking-space, so his bodyguard stood by the car and waited, as all the rest of us did for nearly twenty minutes, and don't for the life of you think any policeman is going to intervene. I also asked her if she never read the newspapers with their constant reports on scandals, corruption and, indeed, extensive crime but all to no avail: there was no crime in Japan, full stop. This was not the only weird thing about her though, as there were no condoms in the house the only thing she could think of in the way of sex was masturbating me after thorougly greasing my penis with cold nivea cream, god what a mess she made. Anyway I spent a lonely frustrated night in Carolina's workshop. When I made my way back to Barry's flat in a taxi I thought that was the last I'd seen of her and I felt a sharp pang of regret but also reflected one had to count one's blessings as well. I was nearing my departure date and spent my days as the normal accidental tourist during the daytime and drinking with Barry and his cronies at night. On the eve of my leaving I got a phone-call from an at first quite subdued Carolina who asked if I could borrow Barry's spare helmet and meet her in front of Omiya station. When I agreed enthusiastically she buoyed up considerably and said she'd meet me in an hour and would abundantly make up for last time. When we embraced over her motorcycle in the midst of the hustle and bustle in front of Omiya we both felt elated and we sang idiotic songs all during the long slow ride to the north of Kyoto.
Our night was lovely and tender and stormy and mutually satisfactory and in the morning she presented me with a  beautiful summer yukata, a short, man's kimono in light cotton with a blue on white classical pattern of fans which I treasure to this day. I took a taxi back to Barry's and had just time enough left to pack my bags and take leave of Barry and his Japanese-Korean wife and then make my way through the nearly deserted back streets of that part of Kyoto in the sweet autumnal sunshine. I passed Shinsen-en with its pond were whole families go and feed breadsticks to the tame carp on public holidays, and finally ended up on Horikawa-dori in front of Nijo Castle where there is an airport busstop. There I was nearly run over by Bruce, also known as the world's tallest infant, on his motorcycle who'd driven down all the way from the country-side village where he lived in order to bid me goodbye and just as I got on the bus he shook my hand and pressed a huge opal into my closing fist. What a guy ! In my mind some lines of a song I was trying to write about Carolina reverberated "When Carolina's on the make, there's such a lot of give and take, when Carolina's on the make. When Carolina's out to score, there's lust and love and so much more, when Carolina's out to score" and on rolled the airport bus that was taking me to Osaka's Itami airport with the song at the back of my head all along the way. 


1981-2011

Broken dreams

The eye of mercy you kept closed
and every gate and door of love
you said the desert was enough


          well baby all you left me
          broken dreams
          baby all you left me
          broken dreams

My expectations ran so wild
like children round a X-mas-tree
but now there ain't much I can see

           refr.


1988.

Love Italian style

When the sun is high
and Picasso paints the sky
my eyes search over mountains
and my mouth looks for the fountain
of your love

When the tree's in bloom
we can smell it in our room
and you open like a flower
celebrating every hour
of our love

            kill me with the kisses
            I've been dreaming of
            swear to me that this is
            what is love

Each and every root
grows rich plants and richer fruit
in the smile upon your face
my fanciful fast fingers trace
all your love

Each and every night
I see fire-works in your eyes
my hands caress the treasures
that no heart can ever measure
oh my love

              refr.


1987. Door Ludo Mariman op muziek gezet. Het was lang deel van zijn live-set toen hij in duo optrad met Gert Van Rompaey

Won't lose sight of you

Departure late at night
window-shopping from a train
yes the darkness looks allright
but will the daylight find me sane ?

Are there lights up in the sky
reflected in the beerstains
on your tray, or do you cry
with happiness or is it pain ?

         All the angels that dance
         on the tip of a needle
         would be well worth a glance
         but they will never wheedle
         me into losing sight of you
         no matter what they do
         I won't lose sight of you

Departure late at night
sitting with silent strangers
who will later on describe
you as Mary in the manger

See yourself reflected
in a window wet with steam
where as could be expected
you see all love is like a dream

       refr.


1987. Door Ludo Mariman op muziek gezet. Het was lang deel van zijn live-set toen hij in duo optrad met Gert Van Rompaey

That's what we know

The wild things have been caught
the void is filled right to the brim
with feelings and longing sought
by you and me beyond our whims

        so nothing goes
        'cause we both know
        that all we build
        will be brought low
        so nothing goes
        that's what we know

All words come and go now
in the air and in my heart
and they never tell us how
to go and make a better start

         refr.

                We dream and scheme
                 and all we want it seems
                 is out of reach, so far
                 beyond the falling stars.


1988

Long distance love

You can tell me how you are
you can't tell me whàt you are
and I know that all I see
you will see it differently
and when I touch you
I know how much you
sometimes stop to wonder
about this cloud we're under

      Darling we were sentenced
      to make love on the phone
      long distance love
      yes we are masters of
      long distance love

We were given medicine
good advice and counselling
so the lonely lead the blind
with dreams foremost in their minds
all we can fulfill
is our choice and will
and desolation ends
when we become fast friends

       refr.

1988.

Get the picture

I said I will no longer be
your chauffeur or your clown
your handyman or servant sweet
a cheap jewel in your crown

You didn't lie but never told
me 'bout your private life
I may be young, I may be old
but I always tried to

             Get the picture
             we are all mixtures
             of what we are and what we'd be
             if we were our own remedy
             I don't wanna miss her
             Get the picture ?

She said you are a mystery
transparent but opaque
you never did make sense to me
and were a constant ache

I own I learned a lot about
deceit and twisted lust
but still I'm feeling far from proud
as trust becomes disgust 

         refr.


1988.

Tremble the walls

The wind runs wild
the sea is high
the moon sails through the clouds

the rain comes down
on fields and towns
the night, the darkness shouts

         tremble the walls
         the waterfalls
         procrastination
         will breed frustration
         all hesitation
         brings limitations
         procrastination
         will breed frustration

the air is chill
the storm blows ill
the soothsayer keeps mum

wet days so gray
and what to say
when all the world goes numb

          refr.


1988. Door Ludo Mariman op muziek gezet. Het was lang deel van zijn live-set toen hij in duo optrad met Gert Van Rompaey.
       

Transformation

Eyes screening the counter
as if it was a shooting range
where every other drinker's
right and ready for a change

          Transformation
           tonight's marching orders
           transformation
           breaching every border
           transformation

Coffee-grounds won't tell you
and the cards and stars won't spell out
how to dance and prance and chance
your luck out on the roundabout (of)

             refr.

       you shouldn't let on
       life's just a bet on

            refr.


1988. Door Ludo Mariman op muziek gezet. Het was lang deel van zijn live-set toen hij in duo optrad met Gert Van Rompaey.

Insight and memory

And then I took to stumbling on the low road
taking drugs and drink in a halting stride
while you danced and partied on the high road
talking and dressing up, thinking "what a way to hide !"

              and the witness said
              she was born blind
              and the witness claimed
              she'd left it all behind
              insight and memory
              don't mean that much to me
              insight and memory

And then reality took over as you know
and I was floored and way out for the count
while you danced and partied on the high road
it took me days and weeks and months to come around

               refr.


1988. Door Ludo Mariman op muziek gezet. Het was lang deel van zijn live-set toen hij in duo optrad met Gert Van Rompaey.

Future love

I'm hot like the sheets
on some call-girl's bed
you're my story-book
since the day we've met
 
          future love (4x)

Yes you're my software
you're my floppy disk
just to scan your screen
I'd take any risk

          refr.

When they bury us
it will be in space
in an orbit set
for a million days

         refr.


     lights undefeated by morning (2x)

         refr.


1986. Door Ludo Mariman opgenomen als demo maar niet uitgebracht. Midden de eightties werd eraan gedacht urnen de ruimte in te schieten (is ook gebeurd met bijv. Timothy Leary.) In de derde strofe zien de protagonisten dat lot met vreugde tegemoet

Devil or doctor

I followed you right to the end
of every dead end avenue
I was talking to the river
going round the bend
praying that your aim was true
and that we'd both be on the mend

        Are we crazy or sane
        are you devil or doctor
        can we come and go again ?
        and she whispered as I rocked her
        am I devil or doctor ?

Lead me round this blacked-out ballroom
with glasses tinkling in the dark
as they're talking to the river
of time beyond doom
teaching me love for a lark
god knows sometimes it comes too soon

        refr.

You know the morning rain's sweet smell
and I sure know it's 'cause of you
as you're talking to the river
knowing oh so well
how we tasted different brews
but that's a secret I won't tell


       refr.


1991.