Words (shame)

Don't look at me when I'm ashamed. Leave me, follow me, without my knowing. I usually take the goat track to the top of the hill. When you find my cliff you'll see me sitting on the edge. I have taken my shoes off. Now turn your back on me like I have mine on you and squat down, meet me with your back leaning against mine. You will see that I have chosen my cliff well. You will see the opposite site of an island, the back of my eyes. Soon I close mine. I need to rest.

Words (rhombus)

Somebody came to my house today in order to destroy.
She kept saying things about my love, she read a letter aloud he once wrote her. I said, she should leave. Then she said it was her house.
I put a piece of mahogany in the vice and turned on the sander. In front of me I had a shape. It hadn't appeared yet, it was still a rectangle. Then an oval. It can make hell of a noise, my sander. When I hit the wood in a certain angle, it gets really bad. I believe it was the right thing to do. Later she leaned against the wire fence and her breasts were pressed through three rhombuses of the wire. It looked awkward. That's the last thing I saw of her before she disappeared.

Words (dinner)

We dine.
We dine with people we like and dislike, love and loved, with those who support us and those who betray us, with those we trust, those we doubt and fear and forget about. We sit around tables where ever tables are made and eat together.
We maintain the dinner.

Words (tribunal)

Words as houses, words you can't blow away, it's a country where no cheek can be kissed. Your smile will die when it falls on a face. They want your words, and only words, the truth, nothing but the truth, there is a question, therefore an answer, in this world. You tell the truth and lie, you tell a lie and lie, you tell the story and it becomes true, walled up, word by word, still no kiss, no smile. I wake up, I know it's a nightmare yet I'm not quite certain. I call it my tribunal nightmare.

Words (liberty)

The boss looked down at her hands as she counted the money. She had her back at him. The boxes were on the sack truck, ready to be delivered. She held him back with words. The customer in front of her waited for her money. I was next in line. She talked dialect to him. Then suddenly she switched and everybody understood.
- You take too many liberties, she said to the errand boy. - That's it, too many liberties. She hadn't finished with him.
He looked down for a second, maybe two, he had a long life's experience with those eyes. The white in his beard was not as familiar, but his eyes, they were the best on the dock, no doubt. There were 24 beers in each box, there were three of them. He would get his share, one or two each. The boss knew. He got more than he was entitled to, that's how it was with this hustler. He took too many liberties. They were in line to get his place. He knew that. If he thought that just because they once went to school together, he could take these libertien, he would have to thnk again. And this story about his miserable teeth, she didn't believe it. Not a word of it. He would use anything to get his liberties. She had a business to run. He had nothing. Nothing! And he would get away with his liberties.

Words (knife)

I never look for a knife in the kitchen drawer, I look for a particular knife. The one that is good in the hand when I cut carrots, the one that spreads the Philadelphia evenly, smoothly. Especially the one that do not give in to the tomatoes' elastic skin. A knife is not knives. My first Swiss Army was far better than the others I've had through the years. None of them were for example quite as pleasurable to unfold.

Words (civilization)

Controlled. Restrained. I don't like the word 'repression'. It's so full of Freud. And dadada. But I do want to know what it is I control. I had a sudden need for slapping your face. And run. I wouldn't like your face slapped. Of course it wasn't the slapping itself, I controlled, but some kind of emotion that would have led to the slapping.
- Control yourself, you said.
You expected me to.
So I did. I controlled myself.
Because you didn't prohibit what let to the impuls, only the potential act. You civilized me. Thank you.

Things I know

"It means that if you live untill you are 90 you are middle aged now". We talked about my up-coming birthday in March.
It was not a dinner conversation but an intimate moment between man and woman. I didn't laugh appropriately, I pondered on the words, honestly surprised that he was right and that I would be lucky to live that long. I'm more likely more than middle aged. Untill that moment age has been a question I asked in front of the mirror. Can it really be that the lines from the eyes to the cheekbones are mine? They get visible here in the West Indies because of the tan. So I look at them once in a while and ask. Not to find answers but to perceive.
In a month or so, I'll turn middle aged...45.
My 10 years birthday is clear in my head, being 10. It was an achievement. Because when I turned 10 I remembered being unable to imagine getting that far. I didn't feel 10, I felt more 20 than the 20 years old. And being five was decades ago.
Later I became a mother. During the first pregnancy I could picture a child at 5, not more than that. Today she is a young woman at 20. When she was 14, I stopped counting.
These are some of the things I know and they don't mean a thing.