self-enclosed narrative

Infinite loop in style or layer

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:50:19 GMT

Dear whoever,

I'm gone from the 19th of September onwards - I will be in the UK.
I will probably keep a journal, not sure whether it will be this one though.

You can of course write me.
I think I prefer letters and paper over portable computers.

Love,
Isabelle

P.S. Don't forget to buy that dress!

Letter of Love

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:27:34 GMT

You open your beer
while nowhere near
evening, friends or TV.

It's 08:23 and my breakfast
smells like these
worlds you call love

I've never seen.

I don't count no more

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:55:42 GMT

When I was young I always used to count the number of times the rope hit the floor before I made a mistake. I used to be good at it, at jumping ropes I mean. I used to be one of the kids that can jump three ropes at a time and be able to count to above fifty. One – two- three … sixty – sixty-one – sixty-two… We always sang a song with it but I don’t remember it anymore. Something about a little bear I believe. I suppose I don’t really care. I don’t really care about counting these days. I don’t count things like how many times a rope hits the floor any longer. I don’t count many other things anymore either, not even the cash I get back after doing groceries. I just put it in my pocket and walk the six blocks home. Yes, that’s what I do, and when I don’t have any pockets I hold it in my hand all the way. Hold it so tight I can’t possibly feel the number of coins, let alone the notes. These days, when I wake up and peer out of the window I only see a mass of people and endless row of cars, speeding by one after another, passing by like mad. And then when you look up, all there is is sky. You can’t count the sky either. I tried once, but it’s really too vast. Like an enormous blanket stretched over your head, except that you can’t hide yourself in it, except that it only makes you more visible. I really mean it when I say I stopped counting. I don’t even count the number of people that remembered my birthday this year. When you count you always have to start with one.

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:38:50 GMT

I rather die dreaming than living in a reality that doesn't allow me to dream.

repetition..

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:23:37 GMT

Hurricane

Emptiness a fellow of your soul
Life destroying when you pass
Never merciful at all
Drop the terror and you’d fall

Silent as an endless void
Vanished in a sudden light
Not to grasp and not to trace
Nothing but a lonely space

Outrageous force of human hate
Reigned by anger and contempt
Leaves behind all broken parts;
A hurricane in our hearts

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:10:36 GMT

What I love about living in the Netherlands is being able to cycle everywhere. I cycle to school, to work, to the countryside whenever I need to get away. When I still lived in a small village I used to cycle 100 kilometer every week to go to school and get back again. Now I’m living in Middelburg and everything is so close at hand, even by bike, that I tend to only cycle on special days in the spring. On these occasions I usually don’t know where I am going; I either follow signs of some cycling route on the roads, or I just cycle purely haphazardly. The arbitrariness of this activity I love, and it is the same arbitrariness that has made me addicted to walking through Middelburg at night.

I love getting up randomly, at a seemingly random moment, and walking away just like that. It feels as if I free myself with this act; as if by my decision in one moment all I leave behind no longer has any grip on me, has become invaluable, powerless. I am that fish sliding out of the maze. Sometimes, in stressed periods, I have to suppress the tendency to get up in class and just walk out in the middle of everything. The thought of it gives me the same excitement as kissing someone in the middle of a sentence or throwing a glass of water in someone’s face without warning. I guess the statement ‘walking out on someone’ suggests that this inclination of mine is nothing new.

I am addicted mostly to walking through Middelburg at night. I can wander around for hours at an end, always passing something unknown, always getting back to familiarity with the same ease. To me the city is like a rose, twisting and turning and growing around itself. I lose myself in the crooked streets; I forget the cold of the dark, my asymmetrical walk, the papers, exams, deadlines, the future full of obligations. I place myself out of context. When entering an unknown area, made magical by the night, the boundaries of me and the environment seem to have become transparent. I am no longer fixed to my body alone.

If at these moments I am with someone else our words no longer are coming from one or the other but from both at the same time, and whatever one says is what the other one thinks. Our thoughts, words, eyes, hands get entangled in the endless dark surrounding us. Walking no longer is just an ordinary physical activity; my body has become weightless. It is like swimming at night in the sea where the sound, the water the limited sight but endless waves and the dim light of the moon and stars render everything eternal.

Walking also is the easiest thing to do; all you have to do is get up and start.

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:53:34 GMT

Your expectations have surpassed its source of origin. Please kill me.

Phenomenology - how it is all about concretising, place and body these days.

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:44:18 GMT

"I'm not a good actor, I can't play myself". I always thought it was "I'm not a good actor, I cannot be anyone else but myself", that is what they told me, but when I read this I had to write it down and think it over. Now I realise this is your quote, not mine. It is you who cannot act out yourself and is lost in the web of identity, not knowing who you are. I always thought it was me, but now I am a stable nobody, you the chaotic cloud. Please don't pay attention to these words, they are just free writing. I found out you are a source of inspiration. Like when I dreamt about you and the voice screamed at me. In that same dream I was in Turkey, on a graveyard with a tombstone of a king of frogs, this having something to do with fairy tales. Perhaps I killed them, my dreams. When I'm at your place I want to sing humming songs while doing the dishes and making sure you're never too cold. But I have to catch up with you now and with my work. I'm always messing up my planning. I've been behind schedule my entire life. I was even born late.

I finally figured out the answer of this lecture though. It was about having access to different ideas in different settings, how cities are the embodiment of consciousness. I might have to move. They said regulated public space is an illusion of free will. I have so many questions. Often I feel like my questions add nothing to your life, but your answers add so much to mine. I love you for your random text-messages. I stole these last words but they are great. I love words. They are like doorways. A doorway creates a moment of transition, going from one room into the next. It also separates one room from the other. Perhaps we sometimes need a doorway to understand the room we were in and just left. Some kind of reflection. Then when you zoom out you will see the city from above and instead of "you're here" it will ask you "why are you here?" We can never visit a city for the first time because every time we go there we've already been there in our consciousness. I wonder about the architecture of my language. It seems very post-modern and I think we've discarded that theory by now. It is intriguing but you cannot build anything with it. It lacks coherency. It deludes. People will get lost in it and go frustrated. There are no phones in my language - the only thing to do is to go back every day at the same time to that clock at noon in the hope to meet me there to explain to you how this works.

This is a map. This. These words, this site. It is what I give you as a guideline. I know it has drawings all over the place and silly remarks in the margin, but essentially it is a mindmap. I mapped myself - very roughly - at different points in time. There are starting points and open spaces and cramped buildings and endless walking and thinking. I hope you will figure it out one of these days and find me where I am.

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:15:22 GMT

I moved and bought new shoes. Now you won't hear me coming see me living anymore. My house a giant peach out of your reach between this fruit the chokingcore is me growing out of your greed.

About Living in Middelburg and going Mum and Dad

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:14:57 GMT

Seems like I'm back here once again, I need it. Too much has been going on in the past few days. I had to return to something that is safe and mine, somewhere I can just express myself freely in my own way.

I've been wandering around in middelburg and got really scared and fascinated. I will always remember Middelburg as the city of wandering around at night, where you always go one way and end up on the other side - having unconsciously walked in a circle, where you always think you know where you are then find something new, where you know street A and street B but do not understand that they are connected and how they refer to each other. I also get disorientated, lost, but always end up again in a street I know that seems totally disconnected to where I just came from.

And these thoughts in my head. Said only once but alive and in red - magnified, underlined - I knew I was lost.
Whole streets with unknown houses stretched out before me. Deserted neighbourhoods with flats and silent lights lost in darkness and only these repetitive phrases in my head and me trying to answer what she had been doing. She wanted to become the narrator, she wanted to become the narrator, she wanted to become the narrator. But did she? Did she? Maybe she wanted to reduce herself to a character? Maybe she wanted to become the narrator and reduce herself to a character. Maybe she wanted someone else to become the narrator dominating her character. And all these steps I tried to recreate that had been muddled up by the rain. There is no way of knowing whether they might have been tears. I can't see behind the sky and my sky was clouded by now. Whole areas of living and lives stretched out before me - unknown- I had to tag to my mindmodel of Middelburg, whole lives that had been existing all along, together with me, that had been nonexistend in my head. Being in need of an authority means choosing white academic older male. Is that it? Is that the reason? I had been staring at a broken lantarnpole for some minutes, not realising it was one because of its strange state. What if I had never seen her from the right angle? As if you think the world has ended and there suddenly is another part. I felt how I sketched the new place in my head but it made me feel so lost - to know I didn't even knew my own world. What else had I missed? I had turned and looked around for recognition - but there were hagues and garden fenches that I did not dare to ignore. All doors had been white and empty earlier, but now they had been coloured black in my head and I knew this was my world because of its colour. I found my way back by just keeping on walking, that is what Middelburg does for you, and I found myself in a familiar street where I passed a house with paintings and as I stood there looking something stirred on the couch. It was a cat with an amputated tail and and amputated paw who after some effort managed to jump from the couch on the window-sill. He looked at me and began to crawl up against the glass as if he wanted to curl himself around me. He kept on purring against the window. I stroked the glass and my thoughts had sunk a level lower and formed little holes in my heart through which not even the sky could be seen.

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:22:37 GMT

Chenga says:
I feel like this water around me is too cold and I want to let myself sink down and hide somewhere down in the sand on the bottom
I had the strangest dream last night

Chenga says:
hiding
and being alone
in the dark
I was down there first with all the sea of information that I had to get through
all sea of life and fishes I saw going past above me and I couldnt follow them for I was still struggling down here - writing with shells words to readers. But then I did swim - I did go fast and I swam and saw fish from closerby but I was alone and I felt alone - and my body was in the waves without sand underneath my feet.
So I had found myself swimming in the cold nothingness and I hated myself for doing this
I stopped swimming
and now I'm sinking down
and I know it is not good either, for I'll have to get out sometime

Dear,

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:16:34 GMT

I can't keep up any longer. I've been running and running and I couldn't stop for rest or drinks or emotions or considerations. I came to the last part, which is - naturally - the most difficult. Running out of energy, the hills steeper, rocks are scattered amongst the way. I am dizzy because of the altitude. I can see the top, also largely the way leading to it. I can see the climbs. I'm not accustomed to this kind of climbing yet, I don't know yet how to do this. And I'm so small in this wild nature.

A while ago I had a look at myself in a little mountain pool and after not having seen myself for such a long time, I recognised myself again and it just was me and I was happy for being there, bended over the pond, in such a beautiful setting. There was dust on my face and smudges of sand, and I thought I looked older than ever before, but it was me.

Later I caught up with myself again, much further on the way, much higher in the mountains. I saw all the cracks, the heavy breathing, the little cuts and bruises all over my body, the harshness of my emaciated figure. Slow throbs forming themselves in my throat, legs falling away - I whirled down in a spiral form - like ink being spread out over a paper or like a figure of sand being erased by the wind. I need to go on, need to for the sake of time, for the sake of progress. I need to if I ever want to have a change of scenery, ever want to walk through the moors, or through the muddy swamps.

My right leg was not supporting my body anymore, my walk turned awfully crippled. I cried while walking which made me more dizzy, more tired, more angry at myself. I should have studied these mountains better when I was still full of energy, still walked with ease. The road up was bendy and full of rocks. I successfully passed most of the rocks on the way, but I miscalcuted and bruised my toe on one stupid little stone, then tripped over a rock that bigger and sharper than I thought it was. I laid there, Scattered like the rocks on the road. Time is running out. No-one around to talk to, express. I don't want them to see me here either, what do I have to tell them? I did all of this on my own, and by my own mistake I tripped and fell and because I'm not qualified enough I'm not at the top. Maybe I'm just not good enough.

So I sat up, in the middle of this all and digged up my diary from the bottom of my backpack. I know I am running out of time, even more so because of this writing, but I cannot face the world and my position in it at this moment.

Childhood Memory

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:56:05 GMT

It was the world seen through white striped images; the stripes of the blinds in front of the window, the stripes of the bars surrounding the bed. There might have been more stripes, certainly more white. There were two beds, and the two girls in laying in those beds stared to the ceiling, which happened to be a kind of pale-white, if such a colour even exists. It was as if someone had cleaned the ceiling with such a strong cleaning supply that not only all germs had been extinguished, but all life had died out.

In the distance always was a bustle of moving white stripes, but up here it was quiet and soon to become a white night. With a feeling of unfamiliarity as to all her surroundings, one of the girls turned to the only other living being in the room. Through the bars of the bed and the darkness of the night she could see a face. At first it was just a face of a girl in a bed, but then, as she kept adjusting her eyes, it seemed to be the face of a friend, or a stranger having survived the oceanic whiteness of everything outside. A silent stranger with a dark mind.

Her eyes grew wide as she registered the only thing not-white in the on the face of the girl who could have been a friend, or a stranger. It was red. The girl in the bed without the red screamed. The bustle of moving stripes came closer and the white night turned into an artificial day. The girl had to blink because the sudden light was too bright for her eyes. The stripes had now become people in white. They gathered around the sides of the other bed. All of them were very busy and didn’t look at the girl that had screamed. They moved the bed and it was movable for it was a bed that could move. There were wheels underneath it, like a skateboard. It was also like a house that you could take with you, like a turtle takes his house on its back, except that it was underneath you, and that it took you with him, like it took the other girl, and except that it wasn’t a house at all.

Later the parents came to pick up the girl that had been left alone in the room. She was called Eleanora. Her parents came and put on her dearest green coat with the dots and they said thank you to all people in white. Together they left the white room and walked through long corridors that seemed to get smaller when you looked for the end.

Je ne regrette rien

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:53:29 GMT

This is what happened:
I started running and I ran and ran and ran, and I ran in all directions and my body was scattered among the cold coast of the morning.

This is what happened:
My mind was left behind and by the time I realised what mistake was mine there was nothing within sight.

This is what happened:
My sensibility was shipwrecked and its remains could be found all over the rounding curve of the beach - there where the sea leaves what's deceased.

This is what happened:
I was like a rose and grew around myself and my vermilion skin boosted life and I tasted the smell of spring within me.

This is what happened:
A smell of a toxic rose made me sleep forget the dream of the thorns hiding beneath those beautiful petals.

This is what happened:
Faith came out to greet me and Tenderness kissed my shoulder and I forgot about all the rest.

This is what happened:
My body was on a bed and it floated in the air.

This is what happened:
My head caught up with my heart and there was an argument

This is what happened:
Feeling ran of like the sea during high tide. Reason was left behind and had to catch up in moments of flight. The running tide of feeling and reasoning power of air in flight caused a great storm in which I did not survive.

Energy Flows

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:02:26 GMT

Someone told me: "you have to feel the mood of the sentence".

I feel words in my mouth whenever I read the right lines. They always want to come out and shout their presence in the world of aesthetics. They are too beautiful to be unsaid, unread - they make me run twice - transfer, undo death of whatever kind. I'm going to write and hide my letters like leaves in endless preformed pages of the most beautiful wood. May be a seed, might be a twig, and then once - possibly maybe - a tree.

A sponge for you window maybe?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:02:42 GMT

I think I am going mad. I am captured in a box of glass and not capable of seeing out of it. They taught me I had eyes and I found out I was blind. They learned me that I have legs but I am paralysed. My intellection revolution has done the opposite of what I wished for. I have no freedom, for I am trapped in myself now.

That what is us

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:12:49 GMT

Can I get me of my mind?
Reflections don't need mirrors
I'm trying to make sense of what is there to be confused about.
Categorisation can only happen with confrontation with emotation
meaning that I first should start before I can see think mean understand
stop progressing in opposite directions all the time

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:42:05 GMT

If I would paint you
you would be gold and silver
thin, precise and sharp as a ruler.

Then they would say: "We will name this painting: 'she who cuts straight'

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:18:29 GMT

I wish I could construct a mega-metaphor to describe that which cannot be caught in language.

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:04:40 GMT

Mier, Ik denk aan je, de hele tijd. Echt. Je kunt niet weten hoe blij ik ben dat je terug bent - je weet het niet, want ik vind nooit het goede moment om alles te schrijven. Ergens in de achtergrond zweeft er vaak een gedachte langs, gericht aan jou, die ik je wil zeggen, maar zo glijdt hij alweer weg. Ik denk hem bewust aan jou en stiekem denk ik dat je hem ook krijgt, maar dat kan natuurlijk niet zo zijn. Mier - ik zit soms vast in een laag waar communicatie ons alleen verder uit elkaar drijft. Ik zie het steeds weer gebeuren, die langsdrijvende mensen in dezelfde wateren. Misschien zijn we allemaal manifestaties van hetzelfde phenomeen. Misschien maakt het niet uit waar je bent als je me maar kunt horen. Maar kun je me wel horen mier? Ik kan niet schrijven nu - en ik kan niet gedachtes dwingen te komen als ik me het schrijven dwing. Mier. Mier mier mier. Ik denk dat soms als ik naar buiten kijk en dan voel ik me gelukkig op een vreemdsoortige manier. Misschien wil ik wel geen woorden gebruiken omdat ik niet weet hoe ik de taal moet aanwenden om me uit te drukken op dit niveau , deze laag van denken - gedachtengebied. Maar laatst droomde ik over je mier. Je was terug en ik was zo blij, zoals ik nu ben. We waren allemaal terug op school - maar dan in een hotel, of op een boot. Jij was er dus ook. Maar je was bekeerd tot regels en wetten en statigheid en verdoemenis en je was niet meer vrij van geest. En ik begreep dat ik jou verloren had, dus rouwde ik om je terwijl je nog ademde. Maar je leefde niet meer mier.. Je was alleen nog maar in een net van regels, zonder gevoel, persoonlijkheid, je was alleen nog maar een regel. Wij waren verloren en verlaagd en verdoemenis - nu niet dan wel spoedig volgens jou. En ik probeerde het nog, iets te zeggen, maar je was er niet meer. Er was alleen nog maar een lege huls en ik begreep dat je verdwenen moest zijn - dat die persoon voor me niet mier was, niets was in plaats van. En je kwam terug om het goed te maken maar het was niet jíj, het was die ander, met die andere ogen, die andere blik. En ik schudde je hand en je torende boven me uit maar ik keek naar beneden, ik had mijn gezicht afgewend en voelde me verdrietig. Ik vergaf haar niet om jou te doen verdwijnen. Alleen mijn haar was goed te zien, het was zilver als een traan. Toen ik wakker werd dacht ik misschien dat ik teveel hoop in jou heb gelegd mier. Misschien ben ik wel op je afwezigheid gaan staan alsof het aanwezig was. Soms ga ik met mensen om en lijkt het alsof we verbonden zijn door je afwezigheid, die ons dichter bij elkaar heeft gebracht. Ik weet niet precies meer wat ik wil zeggen mier. Als ik je brieven lees dan zie ik nu waar je bent - zie ik je - je hebt een plaats gekregen van aanwezigheid in mijn hoofd, maar misschien lopen jouw gedachten in mijn hoofd over in de mijne en zie ik je werkelijk niet. Ik begrijp waar je mee bezig bent denk ik dan, dat heb ik ook - dat voel ik ook. En Mier, al die mensen die tegen me spreken - ze zeggen allemaal dingen die kloppen, die ik ook begrijp en voel, maar tegenstrijdig zijn. Met zichzelf, met elkaar - maar ik luister en begrijp en ben onbeweeglijk daarin. Ik zwijg alleen maar mier. Ze zeggen dat ik moet doen. De mensen, de boeken, de dromen praten tegen me. Ze zeggen dat ik het begrijp. Ik begrijp ook maar ik kan het niet omzetten. Zoals een kind die begrijpt wat er gaande is maar daar niet op kan reageren - alleen met grote ogen kijkt. Het is een netwerk van mensen die hun visie met mij delen - een intellectueel schaakbord. Ik ben nu niet aan zet, maar ik zou niet weten wat te doen als het zover is - en het zijn allemaal maar vakjes, zwartwit zwart wit zwart wit. Ben ik ook maar een vakje, een pion?

Misschien is dat het wel een boek schrijven; een goede filter van het gedachte die vervolgens gesorteerd zijn en zo weer een geheel vormen. In jou geval van alles wat ik aan je denk, want ik denk het aan jou.

Ik mis je nog steeds mier, ook al ben je hier nu.

Mutual Understanding

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:00:16 GMT

hmm, hmm, hmhm
mm, -----, hh??
hmhm, hmhm, hmhm
hmmmmmmm

Cap ou pas Cap

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:03:49 GMT

free writing means abandoning all words with attached quality, as well as form, style rhythm. But I can't. so I create. this. now I feel heavy for my existence, the responsibility to create something useful, something good and beautiful renders me nauseous, incapable, immovable. Understanding kills action sounds like it being too late and me ought-ing to be travelling - I knew it. But we got words and I cooked with them yesterday though I forgot the salt. I created a tyrant, a millionaire and riddle ravioli. I will ask you soon for advice though I might not listen to it. Why I wish to be perfect. Wait till I'm 60 - I might have created the revolution with deeds expressed in words like marriage pronunciations. We will have exchanged our vows and then I will pass you the salt for cooking.

Oh wait.

I remember. We met april 7. There was - 0202 - the possibility of improvement.

Cap

Existential fear

Mon, 26 May 2008 20:10:43 GMT

I think I cannot be here for some time

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:59:15 GMT

No I don't want your words.

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:57:44 GMT

I smash them to the wall your words- my hands unbutton your trousers - made of more than all clothes I have.
My thoughts are naked, displaying feeling, a need to highlight all action with bright red- like the lobster I saw this morning on telly
Steaming emotion, I want give myself twice - container state of heated liquid: It boiled and died - leaving red shell behind.

My moon is dark on both sides
- I miss you so much tears are in my tea
- I will wait until the night falls. Slowly -no moon- I will make my way through the grass, up on the hill. Soft it will be, soft and cold with wet. Now I'm ill. Now the heat and the days press me down, my heart cannot move - wants air - the pressure - there is none -