One thing I’ve discovered about Facebook: if I use a vertical photo in a post, it won’t show up on the title page.  And since I like using pics to entice people to actually read my stuff, here’s a horizontal shot that doesn’t tell you anything about my subject today:

And now a vertical photo that does:

I was working out like a hero this morning, surrounded by other heroes doing their fitness thing.  As I gazed at the sweating mass of humanity, one word came to me: BLACK.  “They’re all wearing black!”  A slight exaggeration but the trend was clear.

Then there’s me, sporting my yellow “Why not?” t-shirt.  I love wearing this shirt.  It’s inspired by a conversation I had with my friend Lore Nachtergaele two years ago.

I’ve worn goofy t-shirts for decades.  In Canada, people often came up to me to comment on the message.  In Belgium … hardly ever. 

There are lots of people roaming around Gent centrum today.  As I started my ten-minute walk home, I launched into experiment mode:

1.  Will anyone passing by say something about my shirt?

2.  Are there any other folks wearing clothes with silly messages?

***

And the survey says …

1.  No.  As far as I can tell, not even one person (of the 200 or so on the street) even glanced at my chest.

2.  Well, maybe.  One guy had a painting of a beach with a few small words that I couldn’t read.  That was it.  Most shirt-wearers displayed messageless solid colours.  Lots of black again.  The few words I saw were either companies (“Puma”) or sports teams (“Bulls 23”).  For the uninitiated, that one refers to Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls basketball team.

***

To “Why not?” let me add “Who cares?”  None of this seems relevant to anything.  But in the spirit of “So what?” I’ll continue walking … and wearing … and writing.

I was sitting in Jaggers this morning, enjoying breakfast.  I was on their terrace, secluded by an umbrella and plants.

Past the bush in front of me, I saw a purse drop to the ground out in the square.  I leaned over to see an old woman had fallen.  A couple was already approaching her.  They helped her up and picked up her purse.  Twenty seconds later a server from a neighbouring restaurant was there too, offering her help.

I was still sitting.

I see myself as a kind person but I had taken no action to assist.  My reasonable mind told me there were already people attending to the woman but I still managed to bring into the moment the life-lingering thought “I’m bad.”

I do feel that I’m evolving spiritually, that there’s ever more love gushing from me.  I guess, though, that I’m like the stock market – gains and losses, with hopefully a slowly climbing value.

Half an hour ago, as I contemplated what to write today, the words “Find something else” bubbled up.  Avoid what was immediately true.  Don’t be that vulnerable.

Silly me.

And so I wrote … about my sadness and embarrassment.  Because that’s what’s real.

***

And in answer to my question …

Me

Emile was a French novelist who wrote in the late 1800’s.  He’s been dead for over 100 years but he continues to reach human beings.

What remains after we’re gone?  I think our Spirit still floats in the air.  And then there are our words …

I’ve just spent half-an-hour searching for things that Emile Zola said.  I couldn’t stop.  There were words after words that touched me.  Now I’ve accumulated seventeen quotes!  Who among you will read all that?  On the other hand, perhaps a few will find one thought among seventeen that gives you pause.

Let’s find out …

We are like books.  Most people see only our cover.  The minority read only the introduction.  Many people believe the critics.  Few will know our content.

If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.

Respectable people … What bastards!

The thought is a deed.  Of all deeds she fertilizes the world most.

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they’ve been taught is wrong!

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.

Sometimes she was seized with hallucinations and thought she was buried in some vault together with a lot of puppet-like corpses which nodded their heads and moved their legs and arms when you pulled the strings.

While the storm was erupting, she stayed, staring at it, watching the shafts of lightning, like someone who could see serious things, far away in the future in these sudden flashes of light.

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day.

She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing if you couldn’t give yourself?

They have so smothered me in their middle-class refinement that I don’t know how there can be any blood left in my veins.  I lowered my eyes, put on a dismal, silly expression, just like them.  I was just as dead-and-alive as they were.

The whole of Paris was lit up.  The tiny dancing flames had bespangled the sea of darkness from end to end of the horizon, and now, like millions of stars, they burned with a steady light in the serene summer night.  There was no breath of wind to make them flicker as they hung there in space.  They made the unseen city seem as vast as a firmament, reaching out into infinity.

He wept for truth which was dead, for heaven which was void.  Beyond the marble walls and gleaming jewelled altars, the huge plaster Christ had no longer a single drop of blood in its veins.

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.

A horribly bitter taste came into his mouth: the futility of everything, the eternal pain of existence.

There Albine lay, panting, exhausted by love, her hands clutched closer and closer to her heart, breathing her last.  She parted her lips, seeking the kiss which should obliterate her, and then the hyacinths and tuberoses exhaled their incense, wrapping her in a final sigh, so profound that it drowned the chorus of roses, and in this culminating gasp of blossom, Albine was dead.

I’m a fan of Dutch cyclist Puck Pieterse.  She’s your basic nice person … and she loves life.  Puck is famous for her YouTube videos, where she straps a camera to her chest and takes us for a ride.

For decades, my version of watching sports on TV has been to glom on to my favourite player and cheer like crazy.  I did that in the Olympics and I’m doing it in the Tour de France Femmes – with Puck. 

Of course there are heroic exploits in any sport, no matter the runner, tennis player, rider …  The moments that take my breath away: such as a world record run in the 800 metres by Keely Hodgkinson, a winning lob over the opponent’s head by Ons Jabeur, landing just inside the baseline.  And Puck outsprinting Demi Vollering by a third of a wheel in the Tour’s fourth stage.

But I’m still stuck in hero worship, and it’s not a bad thing.

Yesterday was the fifth stage.  Demi and Puck came down in a crash with 6 k to go.  Lots of blood.  Neither finished high in the day’s standings.  It was what happened after the finish line that moved me.

Demi was warming down on her stationary bike, in pain.  Puck came over and gave her a real hug.  Fierce competitors … and sisters.

Before the podium ceremony, Puck also hugged stage winner Blanka Vas, accompanied by a huge smile.  Blanka and Demi ride for a different team than Puck.  No matter.  There is love.

Sure, I love watching Puck giving her all on the climbs.  Even more, I love watching her humanity.  Including her humour:

Now I have some nice extra red things to add to my polka dot jersey

[This jersey belongs to the woman who has done the best on the climbs]

***

Puck inspires me

And so it follows …

May we all inspire each other

A small fiery particle thrown off from a fire

A small flash of light produced by a sudden disruptive electrical discharge through the air

A sense of liveliness and excitement

Any of those meanings will do nicely.

See the little dot of light in each eye?  We all have them.  Check out your friends and neighbours.  They all have the sudden glow that reaches out from their face to the world.

Or at least it’s designed to reach.  Some of us keep the dot to ourselves.  And that’s a waste of good light.

***

Our eyes are meant to be noticed

We are meant to sparkle

We are meant to join

And many of us do

Yesterday was talk.  Today I’m really here … in the Gent Sint-Pieters train station.

After lingering over my mandarins and yogurt in the main lobby, feeling the art on the walls, here I sit in Starbucks.  More old paintings, some coloured drawings and three domed mosaic ceilings.  Voilà:

I love the curves above.  It feels like they’re blessing me.

***

At the far end of the room stands this clock.  Minute by minute the hand progresses.

And to translate the Latin:

It escapes … irretrievable time

Ahh yes.  On we go, and go and go.  My cappuccino feels eternal and universal.  The sipping may be through anyone’s mouth – past, present … or future.

***

The lobby showed me the world.  Straight up in the middle of the ceiling, there’s a swirl of steam and speed.  Trains have always taken people to their destinations.  There’s a lift under our wings as we go out and about.

The image is mesmerizing … and way up high.

***

Soon after entering the station, I sought my home – the city of Gent.  And it found me:

The churches of centrum, the gabled roofs, the curving hats of Rabot – the painter saw them long ago.  I see them now.  And may young kids grow into adults who still look up … at the walls of Gent Sint-Pieters.

There is much to see

Gent has a stunning train station – Gent Sint-Pieters.  The art deserves long looks.

Typically and naturally, I travel to the station to go somewhere.  Not necessarily in a rush but in transit.  And being on the move, I miss a lot.

There is much to linger over.  All I need to do is look up.  Such as the city of Oostende on the English Channel:

Or the paintings of Antwerp and Brabant:

I’ve been to Antwerp but I don’t know what Brabant is.  All in good time I will discover my new country.

Have I gone to Gent Sint-Pieters to sit and behold?  No.  I’ve simply written about it here and now and taken some images off the Internet.  That feels like cheating.

So … tomorrow I’ll take the tram to the train station and give you the real deal.  An immersion rather than dancing around the edges.

I might even venture into the American icon Starbucks.  A friend told me there’s something spectacular inside.

See you then

I often say “The last time I looked, I was 25.”  Life flows out by the day, month and year.  Et voilà … here I am at 75.

I had breakfast in Le Pain Quotidien on the Korenmarkt this morning.  After eating, I pulled my pills and supplements from my backpack, plus my water bottle.  I unscrewed the cap and out spilled some water on the wooden table. 

Since the table wasn’t perfectly flat, the tiny puddle became a flow.  I watched the inching towards the edge.  And then I watched some more.

The sun shone on the table … and I contemplated life evaporating.  Eventually I swept my hand through the water.  At one point I thought of taking some pictures to show the darkness receding.  Here’s the second one:

Feel the momentum of the sun … the flowing towards … the inevitability

For us all

Fifteen minutes ago I walked into Izy Coffee on the Langemunt, having decided to sit there and watch for couples holding hands on the street.

I had just started dripping stevia into my cappuccino when I looked up to see mom, dad and young son bouncing along … hands linked.  Talk about an intention becoming real!

My wife Jody died ten years ago.  What I especially miss is holding hands as we strolled along.  We were in sync, rather than “two solitudes”, or one ahead and one behind.

***

Okay.  Back to the experiment.  If I sit here for another half hour, how many couples or families will I see holding hands?

It’s 10:18.

10:21 – Already six male/female couples have walked by, none holding hands.  (Sigh)

10:22 – Mom and ten-year-old daughter!

10:23 – Two m/f couples pass each other

10:24 – Another!

10:25 – One more.  The hand holders are all pretty young so far, in the 30’s or 20’s.

10:28 – I’m getting tired of the timed tally so I’ll switch gears.  Now I’m seeking a couple in their 60’s or older who are holding hands.  Stay tuned.

A woman on the left, a man on the right.  He holds a shopping bag in his left hand.  It’s not available for her right hand.

10:50 – That’s half-an-hour of observation.  Several older couples have walked by, just two of them holding hands.

No conclusions here.  I simply feel sad when there’s no touch and so happy when there is.

It’s a tenderness that I want to feel again

It’s a three-day party in my neighbourhood of Patershol.  I forgot to take pictures yesterday but this one from the Internet gives you a good idea of what my street looked like last night.

If you look at the black sky, you may be able to pick out my balcony on the right.  Be prepared for very slow walking!

In the late afternoon, I sat with Belgian friends in front of a community centre in Patershol.  It’s a Friday afternoon tradition for them, and often for me. 

I treated myself to a Patershol coffee, deepened by the presence of jenever, a liqueur from the juniper berry.  The whipped cream on top was pretty cool too.

The true cream, however, was sitting with folks who accepted this English-speaking newbie.  Yes, I’m learning Dutch but mostly I didn’t know what my friends were saying.  They spoke fast, and so I was told, in a dialect centred in the Gent area.  I smiled when I recognized a few words.  Actually I also smiled when I didn’t.

At one point, two in the group were really going at it in discussion.  I thought they were arguing but actually they were agreeing with each other that recent street closures to cars in Gent were bad.

Somehow, with my stuttering Dutch and bursts of English, I made people laugh.  I love doing that.  The world needs more raised cheeks and upturned mouths.

As I sipped my jenever coffee and tongued away whipped cream from my upper lip, a gentleman approached.  He was dressed in a military uniform and carried a large bell.  A jolly chap … one of the three town criers in Gent.  He was on the terrace to officially open the Feesten.

There’s an international town criers association.  They even hold world championships.  Our visitor said he knew some town criers from Canada.  I asked if he remembered my dear friend Bill Paul who for many years was the crier in London, Ontario, Canada.  He did!

Sadly Bill died a few years ago.  He was such a kind man, standing on street corners and creating balloon animals for kids young and old.

Two town criers who bring joy to folks walking by … linking my past and present.  And here comes the future.

***

I’m home here in Gent

In my address, my feet and my heart