The Wayback Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/20040615215704/http://underabell.blogspot.com:80/
 
woensdag, juni 09, 2004
The day I forgot my post surgical check-up

Turquoize lozenges and mint tea play smart tricks in my mouth when it is this warm in my garden. We are very good friends on a day like this; they reward my smooth massage with a striking cold wind circulating in my mouth when I breath in.

It brings only relief for a moment.

I lie heavily in the cane chair, the heat pushing me down or gravity pulling on me stronger than ever. Umberto Eco has slipped from my fingers, a dramatic act that I was very aware of doing when the Franciscan monks tired my eyes too much. I am an actress in solitude, a languishing heiress in her lush gardens in the Dutch East Indies.

But the cane makes ugly red and blue prints in the skin of my upper legs and the back of my neck, like no chair of a rich lady would do. This is merely a monstrously hot day in June in the garden of my own house by the dike, where the frogs in the basin croak, and the common ducks cross the drive chattering, warning the absent passengers until the last duckling reaches the cool, green water on the other side.

The chattering no longer more than an echo in my ears, I feel my eyelids lower.



artwork credits:
rp271103 by
Babette Wagenvoort


A-M | 11:52 AM |

zaterdag, mei 29, 2004
Painfull truth

"Oh, for the sake of momentum
I've allowed my fears to get larger than life
And it's brought me to my current agendum
Whereupon I deny fulfillment has yet to arrive

And I know life is getting shorter
I can't bring myself to set the scene
Even when it's approaching torture
I've got my routine"

Aimee Mann

Nobody could describe better what I have done in this past year. Thank you R. for getting me this cd.
This weekend may very well be a turning point; starting today, using a method we've learned about four years ago, my friend in America is going to help me break the routine.

PS. I have posted my photograph in the sidelinks, following John, who did so too. When I saw John's photo, I really liked it to finally know the face behind the words. So here is my photo too, for those who are interested. I will take it down again for privacy reasons in a few days. And yes, I am aware that my chipmunk-cheeks give me the face of a seventeen year old instead of twentyfour..
6/4/04 Update: I have decided to keep my photograph here, though not like now on top, but at the bottom of the side links section.
6/15/05 Update: The photo is gone, and replaced with the artwork that a friend once made based on that same photograph. It can be found on my bio page.

A-M | 10:44 AM |

zaterdag, mei 22, 2004
Therapy

Low sun through window panes. Sharply reflected by my paleness, back to the badly cleaned glass to stay and form miniature rainbows. The wooden spoon in my right hand swirls in courgette chunks and a ready made Thai stir fry mix from the grocery store. Always his eyes and his fingers on the pink, transforming the shape.

I can smell the oil and spices I added merely because I love the sound of their names. Basilicum, thijm, rozemarijn. A tablespoon of sweet and sour sauce. While it is slightly too late for the shrimp I decide to give their rosy flesh a chance to gain a little more than a hint of the flavour I created, before I throw in the noodles in an attempt to make the meal hearty enough for my hungry man.

His voice and his sparkling warm eyes when I place the steaming bowl on the table and sit down with my arms crossed over my shoulders.

"Who are you hiding for?"

One noodle lands on my skin, in a perfect half circle.



artwork credits:
rp040504 by Babette Wagenvoort

(Used with permission of the artist. Size reduced to fit the column -A-M)

A-M | 5:48 PM |

maandag, mei 17, 2004
Wiggling

On my bed a jumble of random items.
A fist thick blue novel about the history of philosophy lies on top of the book I should be reading instead: The Experience Economy by Pine & Gilmore.
Notes of my last year's interviews with village inhabitants and municipal employees, never worked out.
A plastic pot with shiny black licorice.
Two pencils and a sharpener bought at Windsor Castle in England.
A waterbottle and one box of sesame crackers. Empty.
My Sony that plays 'California Dreaming' and lights up with a photo of my boyfriend when he calls. The only high-tech item within these four walls.
I have managed to produce this mess although I have spent most of the day under the blue sky. One item after another was taken outside to use, and one after another was brought back inside and thrown on their present place on the green and old-rosy quilt.

Peeping over the top of my laptop screen I see toes wiggling restlessly, practicing ballet dancer moves. They are my toes, and since they are attached to my bare legs that rest on this bed, they must represent something of how the rest of 'me' feels.

I am having an extraordinary need for clear transparency. And I don't mind that that is a pleonasm. I think of an entry I wrote in October, one that I am not sure of if it inspired to the title of this journal or the other way around. I was in an entirely different situation, leaning against a depression and afraid of the lump in my head. But though I am stable now, both mentally and physically, I do long for the quiet loneliness under that conceptual glass bell, once again.

I can come up with a cause for this restlesness. I can come up with a bunch of causes. But they do not satisfy my need to know why I let this bunch influence my state of mind.

One 'cause' is that this week, I officially start the continuation of the research-project I took up last year in April. My intention then was to finish the project in August and graduate in September. But I did not. A series of negative events distracted me, all cumulating in the tumor we found in the neck in October after which I literally hid away the books and interviews for the thesis. Instead I worked random jobs and I read books and I hid myself for the social world except that on the net.

Taking up the project once again with in the back of my mind the situation and state of mind I was in last year when I 'worked' on it, confronts me with a fear to fall back into that pattern. One might ask why I am spending even a second on this fear while my mind and body are fit for the job and can just go for it. Well, I wonder about that too. And that I wonder about it and let these thoughts distract me from the work I should be doing, angers me. And makes my toes wiggle.

In the philosophy book I was reading today (Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder) I learned about David Hume (1711-1776), who, like Buddha, stated that there is no 'I', or a fixed personality. Human life is merely an eternal series of random mental and physical processes that change a human being constantly. The physical and mental processes have no neccasary relationship and thus: Patterns do not exist. We are no victims of the whims of our own personality, because there is no personality.

So there is no reason to believe that this human being will fall back into the pattern of 'taking up project/ getting distracted/ feeling bad/ putting down the work'. And so there is also no reason to believe this human being is not able to somply take up the project and just do it.
Finish it.
Get it over with.

It is very simple but 'I' make it not so very simple, because 'I' am still here re-living the past, feeling all kinds of emotions like fear, shame, hate! With this, 'I' am creating new distractions. I am aware of that. And I don't like myself for that. I keep thinking of a post of John, or well, I remember only that one line "Just do it".

My temples throb and hurt. I don't feel like re-reading this for grammar mistakes. I will try and sleep and dream of that old glass bell again.

A-M | 10:06 PM |

dinsdag, mei 04, 2004
Blunt

It's in fashion, you know. Little pricks in barely hidden raw nerve ends. Leaving a surprisingly bloody mess.
Oh! I'm sorry, did that hurt?
And without a blink, off they are.
On massive stone rollers, cracking the earth.

A-M | 8:55 PM |

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