“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.”
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