My dear little boy. How you rant and rave, how you cry and scream. You say things like “stupid mum” and “I hate you mum” and “I don’t want to be with you, I want to be with Dad.” You punch my bottom, pinch my thighs, you bight my arm. And then you bury your […]
moreA woman smokes on her balcony. I can see her and like to think she can’t see me. I hardly ever sit, and now that I am sitting – simply for the mere act of sitting – I look out the window at her. God do I wish I was smoking that cigarette. Short drags, […]
moreLittle boy. You are too young to feel shame, too young to take blame; blame for the tears. Too old to cry, too old to lie; lie about fears. Little girl. You are too young to be pretty, too young to feel pity; pity for this world. Too old to shine, too old to whine; […]
moreThe world keeps spinning. And sometimes, you feel like you’re not a part of it. There’s two things you can do. Panic, which is what your ego is telling you to do. Or be still. Ask yourself whether you really want to be a part of your ego’s world, or prefer to be in yours. […]
moreYou are the sea. A vast, wide-open ocean of confidence. You know no horizons, no end. In fact, you define the horizons. You move in slow motion, a giant, powerful force. Warm blooded and cold, light and dark. You harbor the starfish and the eels. The whales and the sea horses. You carry the hurricanes, […]
moreThe Olympic Games. A woman wanted to be a part of something grand. So she used her charm and pleaded with an acquaintance of hers. He was a very important person of some sort. He told her, “you just got lucky. The Dutch national team is out of swimmers so there’s an empty lane for […]
moreStop eating and look around, just for a minute. A whole mountain of things. Why choose if you can have everything, all of it, all the time? Eat, sleep, complain, gain. Or lose? People lose, sometimes. That too. A man makes his way to a woman. Their bodies spell out their age: seventy. They are […]
moreThe silent world we dwell in. The muted one, numbed. The one in which life has been narrowed down to only one central character: you. The rest circles around you. This tiny little world. Round and round it goes, swirl and twirl. “A water tornado,” says my son as he turns circles in a swimming […]
moreIn fact, divorce is full of first-time moments. I just waved my 5-yr-old goodbye for the first time. He will be staying with Dad for 3 nights. This is going to be our new weekly routine. I’ve often gone away to write, and Dad has often gone away for work. People say “so you’re used […]
moreThere’s a first time for everything. A first move, from one home to the next. Becomes the tenth, maybe twentieth. I have never moved back to a place before. That’s a first. To then experience nothing has changed, and so neither have you. You can’t have, if everything else is still the same. Some first […]
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