Ideologie
Op de terugweg van een vermakelijk onderonsje met mijn Koreaanse zwager in een historische wijk van Seoul waar het nu wemelt van delicatessen en bijoux, stapte ik in volle overtuiging in de metrotrein in de verkeerde richting. Uw kniereflex is bekend: dat overkomt iedereen wel eens. Maar ik bleef zitten en verbaasde me er station ...
Sterven
Ik herinner me een oude man die over sterven begon
het is een vreselijk iets, zei hij, ik heb er een hekel aan
hij blijft me het antwoord schuldig hoe hij dat weten kon
want hij heeft het uiteindelijk maar een keer gedaan.
Reading: Mourning and Other Activities by Raza Ali Hasan
Raza Ali Hasan (b. ?) is a Pakistani-American poet who doesn't care much about activism. He was born in Bangladesh and raised in Islamabad and moved to tue United States in 1991. He wants his poetry to paint a more accurate picture of the world. He teaches in Colorado. I read a verse about mourning ...
Smile encounter
I ride the Seoul subway, line six. A small young woman in a colorful dress gets in and takes a seat. She is not Korean and she wears a scarf. As relative outsider in this monocultural megalopolis, I instinctively feel solidarity with the timid girl, whose face was ridden with acne. I smile at her. ...
When we’re old and done
When we're old and done How will our love feel? Will we be Anxious, afraid we missed out on What we could have done? Afraid of Looking back and feeling like dry sand? Life seems funny and meaningful when the people Around us are younger and we, unwittingly We become authorities on living They say ...
Cloud Watching with my Child
We lie still on a silent green slope watching the clouds for hours in their unending transformation You see a crocodile, I see a monkey, you see a turtle, I see a tiny fish then there is silence and I think of you Much later, attuned to thoughts of grief oblivious of the highs and ...
Gezellig potje Twitter gespeeld
Vandaag gunde ik mezelf wat puberaal vermaak met het verguisde gezelschapsspel "Twitter", niet te verwarren met Twister dat we vroeger op kinderverjaardagen speelden, toen je als tienjarige nog niet hoefde te vrezen voor een aanklacht van je negenjarige speelkameraadje vanwege ongewenste intimiteiten. Twitter wordt liefkozend het open riool of de kloaka van opinieland genoemd, en wie ...
Meditation on nature
Close your eyes and breathe in. How do we meditate about nature? Let us think of some cliché scenes of nature: magnificent Alpine peaks, unspoilt blue lakes, endless tundra, rain forest. The concept of nature seems to be defined as those objects left alone by men. The fewer humans have set foot somewhere, the more ...
Reading: Between the Sultan and His Statue by Yusuf al-Saigh
Yusuf al-Saigh (1933-2006) was an Iraqi poet who has published poetry since the 1950s. He also worked as an illustrator and painter. I read a short verse that nicely renders the working of symbolic authority: Between the Sultan and His Statue A wily sculptor Cut several pounds off the sultan’s figure And added several pounds ...
Meditation on truth
How do we meditate on the idea of truth? Philosophers have written about it for many centuries. We will not revisit the theories of Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Kant, Frege, Derrida. We don't need to remember anything if we think for ourselves. Take a long breath. Truth is a property of statements, not of things. We ...
Reading: Dark Eyes Touching Clear Sky by Kattya Janssen
Kattya Janssen (b. ?) is a Dutch poet and artist. I read a poem from the section 'Lust' on her
identity
strap me down on a vivisection table
study my humors, my bile, my spleen
I'm keen to know who I am and if I'm able
but don't forget to stitch me up again.
Meditation on reality
First we breathe in and feel blessed. What inspired our meditation about reality must have been our involvement with it, in some way. There are people who think that what we call reality is 'in reality' a fiction. The universe is empty space laced with energy and some of this energy takes on a special ...
Madness is tragedy deprived of time
Kijkraam
Toen ik mijn dochter afgelopen donderdag naar haar balletles begeleidde, ontdekte ik dat er op verzoek van een aantal Koreaanse ouders een kijkraampje in de deur van de gymzaal was gecreëerd, waar deze plaatsvindt. Tijdens de les gaat de deur dicht zodat de kinderen zich kunnen concentreren, en deze oplossing was elegant, out of the ...
Cheer up well done
So I have come to an inversion: your recognition will feel like an insult, (This is a defense mechanism) I have accomplished officially accomplished close to nothing, and I am still closing in to nothingness. This morning (but the diction is universal) I realized that all future things will be mere projections of the past, ...
57 ways how I grew my blog exponentially and you won’t believe what happens next
From September 2017 until May 2018 the number of views per month increased exponentially. I posted every day: essays, poems,