On Time or How do we Love?

“To this day I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.”

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

What is Fear and are we do our Beliefs make us Oblivious?

But above all - why do I feel like I should know everything and have all under control?

I would like to describe a feeling I carry in my chest at the moment. If you would stand in front of me and look at me, the heaviness would be just behind the sternum bone, leaning somehow to the heart, (so to your right, my left) and taking space that rightly belongs to the air which is about to fill my lungs and start yet another rush of oxygen through my veins. Oxygen that I need in order to live... my life... fully.

I look around myself, a sunny day beyond the window of this “clean-shaven” bar set just a couple of tram-stops away from the centre of Brussels.

People, young and not so young. Children. Families.

The table next to me is occupied by a son, I would say, in his late 50s. Across to him there sits a woman, in her 80s. A mother. Or an aunt. In that case, definitively his mothers sister.

They drink beer. In silence.

She is having the normal Vedett and he is having a Vedett Blanche.

She took her coat off, which I understand since it is warm outside at the moment. Spring has come back yet she still caries her winter coat upon her shoulders, and a heavy sweater. He, on the other hand, wears a striped white-blue shirt, but I can only see the collar since he has a light sweater over the shirt. Dark blue with a light brown stripe horizontally placed across his chest. On top he still has his washed out green-beige jacket.

You can see they are family because of their hair. Anyway, the lady is turned with her back towards me. I can only see her right ear, part of her right cheek and the corner of her glasses.

I see now that it is not a sweater she is wearing but a cardigan. A washed green cardigan on top of a dark blue dress covered in light blue-white pattern of leaves.

Denise, Denise by Blondie.

Their hair is implying grey but on both of them, specially at her age, the implication is still just an implication. You can still strongly that their hair was black and healthy in the 60s when he was only a boy and she a proud mother of two with a successful husband working as a chemical

engineer for a successful Belgian power plant.

She put the bars monthly activity plan under her glass in order to protect the surface of the table.

Every once in a while they speak to each other, smiles on their faces. But then silence falls between them again and he looks around. Worried. Bored. Covering his mouth with his hand, touching his brow with the pointing finger of his right hand.

He got them another beer.

When she is not holding a class she crosses her hands under the table, on her thighs, just above her knees. Once or twice she used her right hand, lazily picked it up from its resting place, to make a gesture while speaking.

I see their mouth open yet no sound is reaching me. Even though I sit close enough to hear.

The sound is overpowered by the light chatter of the people, cups being placed on their little matching plates, cups filled with hot, fresh coffee. Glasses storing fresh orange juice, sparkling water and hot chocolate drinks.

All is hovering in the blinding rays of light coming in through the windows.

If just for a moment all living is stilled while dust is doing its dance, flirting with the Sun.

“And that's the thing about people who mean every word they say. They think everyone else does too.”

To heal a broken heart or Sugar overdose

“April was a lonely month to spend alone. In April, everyone around me looked happy. People would throw off their coats...”

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Woods

Failure. Total and utter. Complete.

There was a moment when time collapsed and in a whirlpool of a black hole I fell and hooked onto a never ending parade of what?

Disappointment would include expectation - which was not present.

To fall was so easy, because the smile was so..., the only possible thing in the near future was happiness. Tenderness. If only for a moment. But this could have been my mistake. I did want - I do want more of that.

How can you miss that, this moment when all of the Universe aligns and points to one person? Everything is possible. Everything is happening.

And then?

Sorrow. Because you serve your heart of a silver plate - since you already had it prepared, you always have it prepared, you always have to be ready to jump, for the opportunity does not arise too often. And he? Looks at the plate and pokes it. Bewildered. And you look at him using a toothpick. A bloody fucking toothpick!

Who has ever, in the complete history of time, used a toothpick to handle a heart served on a silver plate?!

A toothpick.

Evidently the heart starts to bleed. And instead of pulling it away, you push it even closer. You invest all of your love, all of your trust in the obviousness of the choice, and you bleed.

Keeps coming back to this silver plate, and keeps looking.

He was close. After so many months - he was close.

And he didn't even send a text.

While the heart is getting rotten, blood turning into dust that is slowly blown away by the North Wind, the plate stays silver, sparkling in all its glory. Masterfully crafted by the hope that love is worth the trouble.

It's all about Anna or Suzy, can I call you Suzy?

“Smoking can kill”

a cigarette package

Raining all night long.

At times you like it, at times it keeps you from falling asleep. Then you can not hear it any more. You can only see silent drops of water sliding down your window. Drops that are breaking the lights of the city. Rainbows. A magic land somewhere far away. You decorate the view with luscious curves of smoke you exhale so tenderly. So softly. So lovingly.

Memories. One with the birthday cake. One with a kiss. One with streets of an unknown city. One with loneliness. Heavily, light stars above the still sea. Dark blue, invisible the distance, it melts with the sky. There you are lying with him. Fragile.

You give in to the passion. The whirlpool of thoughts.

It is the skin that asks for your attention. So awake when all else, but traffic, is asleep.

Butterflies fly no more. They are still. As silent as sheep, warm, wrapped in the softness of they wool coats.

It is me. On a corner. In front of the news-stand. Freshly printed Le post has just been delivered. An older, grey haired, man comes out of the back of a van, throwing bundles of newspaper to the woman in front of the tin box with glass windows. She looks at him, silent. Rain. Hope in her eyes, pain in her look. She longs for him. The ignorant delivery person. The van joins the slow, night traffic when she picks up the new paper that will once again be recycled in a week. She looks after the van one more time. Then sighs and returns to her late night work. Selling newspaper, magazines, postcards, gums and tobacco.

It is the skin that asks for your attention. So awake when all else, but traffic, is asleep.

Butterflies fly no more. They are still. As silent as sheep, warm, wrapped in the softness of they wool coats.

Anna. Anna is my name. Anna, the flat battery. The city is dark. Like the deepest forest of the lands far, far away.

You can hear the sounds. The nature calls. Mating. Loving. Living.

Generation after generation, time passes. Slowly flowing, present.

Your past in your memories. The inability to prove it ever existed. Like smoke. The luscious curves of smoke you exhale so tenderly. So softly. So lovingly. From the deepest depths of your lungs.

The neglected promise vanishes forgotten in the distant past of yesterday.

You light another cigarette.

And you sleep.

Alone.