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Dear Mom,
I am writing to you this letter, to let you know how I'am doing. We somehow always get into fights by phone. I know you would love to be with me, to see me, to hear me, to check out for yourself that your daughter is doing fine. I wish you were here. Maybe. I wish you would see me and I wish I would feel you love me just the way I love you. I don’t know how I love you, though, but let’s try. Maybe this letter can replace your experience of seeing me, of seeing me with your own eyes? I can maybe try to tell you what my eyes see when they look at me; or at least, at my day. 



I sleep on a mattress on the floor. Before I started to write this letter, I did what I do every morning, more or less: I try to wake up at 4 am each day. An old man in India told me at this time, the gates of heaven are open and the Gods are talking to the ones who want to hear. Wrapped in my bed sheet, I walk to the bathroom. I feel the taste in my mouth and that reminds me whether I smoked a cigarette last evening. The skin inside my mouth is so thin and flavours get absorbed through it in the under skin and remain with me over night. I listen to the sound of some liquid quitting the body, the sound of water flushing the toilet, I wash my hands, my eyes, brush my teeth and drop my fingers in the cream pot, rub some around my eyes. The skin absorbs it like earth does with rain on a late dry hot summer afternoon. 

Back to my room, I take time to decide whether I shall drink coffee or first type or handwrite some pages, as I started writing seriously and daily practice seems the sweetest and the only way to go about it. And I want to capture those early morning thoughts. I can’t always decide; I often walk around in circles; I end up opening the laptop, checking email, horoscope and the weather. I wanted to say and the news but I actually never do that. I know there are elections in Belgium and maybe in UK, some friends make remarks around that on Facebook. But real politics I never keep an eye on. The Belgium minister of social affairs (I think) did give a brilliant speech though a while ago. He was drunk and I don’t remember what he was talking about but what I remember is that the way he spoke, looked so humane, so real, so authentic. Alcohol was his reality at that point and he openly shared it. His speech I saw on Facebook as well; an Italian colleague has posted it on the wall of a teacher, and I happened to look at his page on that day. It’s the only political speech I followed since about a year or two. Back to my day, I think whether I should do some yoga or maybe better some tai chi. A nutritionist, homeopathy doctor in south of France, said yoga was not good for me as I am already too spiritual; taijiquan would be better, it would root me he said, and I think he’s right - I remember how well I felt years ago when I used to practice taijiquan. I used to call it Tai Chi but since I met my new teachers in Antwerp, professor doctor, lecturer, martial artist, calligrapher, Chinese traditional doctor, poet and alchemist, I learned the proper name is taijiquan and all the rest is crap that sells around and it is actually dangerous and it could even help you end up in a hospital (there were cases they said). So I choose to do taijiquan, as I do have good teachers for it and as it’s easy to practice (but hard to practice it right my teachers would say). I am by now starting my days with it since a while. I do miss yoga though as I love being spiritual; but being spiritual brings me in another dimension of time and I feel there is no time for that now. Philosophy even would be “an attempt to go beyond human state” Bergson seems to have said. But he said a lot of crap as well. I do love his book La Politesse, or rather I like 10% of what he (and mostly the editor) says in the book while the rest seem plain contextual clichés. 

These thoughts or something like that go through my mind as I’m busy boiling water, a cup and a bit, with a cardamom seed; at the boiling point I add a sugar cube (fair trade, brown, cane sugar) – I have a look at the box with sugar on the desk, next to the laptop, to check that – and a big spoon of coffee – some fair trade, biologic and organic when I have the money to do so. I do think again and each day the same, that I should actually stop drinking coffee and switch to black tea for a while, then green tea, then white tea, then to thyme tea or maybe switch to thyme tea directly; they have a nice tasty brand in the health shop. It’s good as refreshment in the morning and it has all kind of antiseptic, purifying, slightly antibiotic merits. However, I drink my coffee and even eat a cookie with it, but not more as to keep the digestion easy, so that not much energy will be deviated to that direction during the tajiquan practice that I am about to start. I start with the neck – it works on the whole spine – I turn the head toward right and left with fluid movements, breathing normally, keeping the back erect. I then work on the eyes, directing the gaze towards right and left; then up and down; then on the diagonals; then in circles, anticlockwise and clockwise, each direction 9 times. Eyes wide large open and strongly closed, 9 times. I then turn the tongue inside the mouth 24 times, one set anti clock wise, then a clockwise direction set, twice outside the teeth, twice inside. Four sets of tongue turning. Then clapping teeth: three times 36 times, swallow the accumulated saliva, deeply. I rotate the shoulders, 30 times, in both senses, symmetrically and simultaneously. It cracks on both sides or actually somewhere in the middle, between the omoplates, or the vertebras around there, at chest height; it’s all connected. 

The phone rings, I look at it, and let the answering machine do its job; the voice at the other end goes: Hello honey, mom here. I am calling to see how do like your new high hills? Well... we’ll be expecting you for dinner next Saturday. Aunt Leela confirmed as well so we’ll be the whole family together this Easter, isn’t that lovely? Kissing you sweetie, take care! 

Back to typing: I then lift my arms at shoulders level, wide open and large and start to rotate the palms toward inside and outside, about 36 times; in the beginning it was hard to count and keep attention at the same time but slowly I got used to it. I then work on the hips, moving in some specific ways and then on the legs and - I forgot to tell you about the arms and the ankles, and the fingers - and then I rotate the hips in circular movements and then in eight-like movements, from left to right then form right to left then from forth to back and then from back to forth, always making sure I sit low, and hang high and keep the back straight and breath normally and have my attention on the centre of my body, somewhere inside 2 fingers below the navel, and try to watch and feel whether it feels alive. All movements should leave from that point naturally and well balanced; I don’t feel it happening that way yet but I keep practicing as I noticed there are some improvements in the way the days go by. Lately I saw ladybirds in my room. I first saw one on the window few days ago, then another one and then 2 more. At times they are on the ceiling at times on the table at times on the window at times I saw one on the glass from which I drink water with my pills every day. I take vitamins and pollen, the one you sent, and drops of “Fleurs de Bach”, bergamot and wild chestnut, I’ll send you their description next time. I was doing a test with the red shoes aunt Leela sent, I’ve put them on with a red open sexy dress. I think too sexy to wear for Easter but just right for my next date with my sweet Japanese fashion designer. I am not in love with him. I know you wish I was, so do I. But we did spent some nice time together. I am not sure I will see him again actually, or actually I am almost sure I will not. It’s been quite a while already. Last time, I sent him a dodgy email as perhaps I wanted to keep him away. Besides, I lost my mobile and moved house twice since then, so unless he’ll send an email … but I guess he won’t, so - so nothing. I hope I can keep alive the memory of his gaze when his face came closer for what he called our last girlfriend- boyfriend kiss, which was the same as his gaze before our first kiss. That long moment before our lips touched. That gaze.