Part Won-Tree

"I'm swaying like a boulder suspended on a pebble on the precipice of a cliff. I might come crashing down, or just sway, rocklike."

I've been standing on the edge of the cliff for so long now. I must have accustomed myself to the danger of falling, slowly letting go of the survival instinct, the intrinsic fear of falling. The subtle, yet addictive thrill of the possibility of falling has become so great that I can no longer step away. But I am cautious, I only take one little risk at a time, one step closer every time, slowly allowing myself to get out of balance, just for a little while. It's not that I have the desire to fall in, I just have been standing here for so long that it no longer scares me, unless when I close my eyes of course. When I let my imagination take over.

Good old Ovid wrote an epic poem called 'Metamorphoses', drawing on Greek mythology. The poem's subject, as the author indicates at the outset, is "forms changed into new bodies". From the emergence of the cosmos from formless mass into the organized material world to the deification of Julius Caesar many chapters later, the poem weaves tales of transformation. The stories are woven one after the other by the telling of humans transformed into new bodies — trees, rocks, animals, flowers, constellations and so forth.

A fictional assembly.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.

We are indeed queer and quaint and all things that start with a Q, and we hammer like madmen, yet we wouldn't want it another way.

Step away.
Step away.
Step away.

Part Won-Toe

If we shadows have offended, think but this; and all is mended that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream. Gentles--do not reprehend if you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck if we have unearned luck. Now to scape the serpents tongue. We will make amends ere long else the Puck a liar call. So--goodnight unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends. And Robin shall restore amends.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene 2

Banality

Banality. Disbelief. Our trustworthy curtain of rationality that explains away our fears of the unknown but also snuff outs the spark of creativity that ignites into hope and imagination. Banality. The word that reduces the marvellous into the mundane, the miraculous to the ordinary and the inexplicable to the impossible. Banality. It epitomizes darkness, dreariness and relentless cold. Banality is the death of spirit. It clouds our minds to the wonders of the world, blinds us from the possibilities of making our dismal lives better. It imposes on us the belief that everything is the result of cause and effect. Evolutionary processes and entropic decay follow fixed patterns, and all things will eventually come to a grinding halt with the death of the sun. Banality is the wet blanket of the cosmos. Banality prompts a jaded parent to destroy a child's belief in Santa Claus. It forces a talented student to lay aside his dreams of becoming a great writer in favour of joining the work force because his advisors counsel him to make “realistic” decisions about his future. Banality is the end of dreaming.

We have left no place for dreamers. We destroyed amazement, it has become a commodity for the gullible and weak of mind.

Enough of that! Why should we not grant ourselves dreams and refuse reality? That is, this value of certainty in itself, which, in its own time, is not open to our repudiation? Why shouldn't we expect more from a dream than we expect from our consciousness? Can't the dream also be used to solve the fundamental questions of life? Who the fuck were my career advisors? Did they amount to anything great?

I dream of hearth and home, of wanderlust and adventure, innocence and play, passion and beauty, change and transcendence. I dream of standing tall, making people proud and seeing happiness around me. I dream of love, unconditional and deserved. I dream of busybodies, storytellers, tricksters, lovers and revellers.

I dream of finding the silver path and not walking it alone.

Part Won-Won

Teenagers put pictures of dead classmate on the internet

Turnhout - A group of Belgian teenagers put pictures of their dead classmate Paul Vanhoof on the internet. After the 14 year old died in a tragic accident his classmates were allowed to say their goodbyes in the hospital. More than one student took pictures of the boy with their cell phones and those pictures were deliberately put on the internet, without consent of the boy's relatives. The boy's family filed a complaint. "It's horrifying what people are capable of," father Louis Vanhoof said in another newspaper.

- Metro, April 23th 2008

Part Nain

Nostalgic Thinking in 5 artworks


Johann Heinrich Füssli, Nachtmahr


Bert Want, Titaanszoon


Jean Fouquet, La Vierge et l'Enfant entourés d'Anges


Pieter Paul Rubens, The Apotheosis of James I


Vincent Van Gogh, De Sterrennacht

Part Sephenn

A very merry unbirthday to me.
To who?
To me.
Oh you!
A very merry unbirthday to you.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Oh, me!

Let's all congratulate us with another cup of tea.
A very merry unbirthday to you!
Now, statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday.
Imagine, just one birthday every year.
Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!
Precisely why we're gathered here to cheer.

A very merry unbirthday to you, to you!
To me?
To you!
A very merry unbirthday!
For me?
For you!

Now blow the candle out my dear
And make your wish come true.
A merry merry unbirthday to you!

Part Siks

Character-Driven Confessions on the Couch, A Psycho-Analysis Exploring a Fictive Realm

What do you think of when you write about the Vampire?

Nothing. To me, he is nothing but a corpse. He leaves his grave at night to drink the blood of the living by biting their necks with his sharp incisor teeth and licking it clean with his anticoagulant saliva. He is nothing but an undead leech, an annalid worm but surprisingly timeless, eternal, unfaltering, flawless in his own imperfection. He is a methuselan patriarch with an endless stream of victims, but no offspring to call his own. He is an immutable void, does nothing but drain.

How about his counterpart, the Bride?

She is his opposite. While he exist freely throughout and out of time's bounds, she is firmly fixed. She can only manifest on her wedding day, ironically that's everyday. She is the feeling of excitement and mystery, remoteness of everyday life because she exists in only that sentimental, idealized way. But maybe, yes, I feel she is shrouded, in that eerie way, by her wedding veil which is like a membrane attached to her immature fruiting body and will ultimately rupture, or should rupture if she wasn't trapped in time. While the Vampire sees time as an eternal void with meaning nor consequence, it is everything to her and is faced with a pink tinge in her face at all times.

How about the other characters, the Pink-Lipped Harlequin for instance?

Well, I don't know. I don't know how long I can keep this up. Is it relevant, didn't I destroy, resurrect and wiped them away again? I suppose the Harlequin is, was, a demon in a diamond-patterned costume. A tormentor, the one to tickle my vices. A forceful, fierce and skillful agitator of cruel acts. He represents reckless mischief. He is always mute, but by his amusing and variegated chicanery a waterfall of possibilities. Pink-lipped, for what would an evil spirit want with a young man? Fool him into acts of sexual desperation. Rash and extreme behaviour, wild and abundant. Whipped into flesh-driven hunts at night, sheered into a frenzied ravaging and despoiling of what should supposed to be values. Theoretically, because he never did get a full hold on me.

I think that's enough for now.

I think so too.