writer

BG 205 – The zebra crossing

This time, The Maakster was not on her daily walk through Quiet Belgian Village, but was driving her car through the center of a neighboring village.
Diagonally in front of her, a woman rode a bicycle on the designated lane, with a toddler on a cute little bike on her other side. As The Maakster approached a zebra crossing, The Cyclist suddenly turned left onto that crossing, without stopping first and without looking around.

Fortunately, The Maakster was paying attention and managed to brake just before the zebra crossing, at a good distance from The Cyclist. Who was extremely shocked, jumped off her saddle, and positioned her feet on the ground on either side of her bike. At the same time, she grabbed her child by the shoulder to make it stop. The little boy, wearing a helmet, naturally got startled, put one little foot on the ground with difficulty and staggered for a moment, diagonally on his saddle, before regaining his balance.

The Cyclist looked furiously at The Maakster and began to rage and yell at her. Pointing along the length of the zebra crossing, she shouted ‘This is a goddamn zebra crossing!’ …

Read More »BG 205 – The zebra crossing

BG 201 – Haiku (EN)

autumnal storm wind
rages past house and garden
a branch loudly breaks

BG 199 – Past perfect tense

– Hey there! Long time no see!
She recognized him. He approaches her table.
He still has that silly haircut and he’s even wearing the exact same jacket.
There are other tables available. She’d rather have stayed seated here alone.
But he’s already grabbed the backrest of the chair opposite her.
– So, I said – you probably didn’t hear me – it’s been a long time!
His face beams with joy.
– Yes.
She answers. That could either refer to that long time or to the fact that she actually heard him.
He dramatically takes off his jacket, hangs it over the chair’s backrest, and sits down, huffing.
– Phew, I’m sitting.
Yes, everyone noticed that. He noisily slides his chair closer to the round tabletop and rests his forearms and elbows on it.
– Gosh, that I run into you here!
Just a little too loud, like in the old days. Not only meant for her, but …

Read More »BG 199 – Past perfect tense

BG 195 – Terse Thunderstorms (Tautogram)

translate those tranquil testimonies
that together tempt the tendency
to tackle the testy temperaments
tick thump throb tumult trash them

technical throwaway tectonics
together tantalizing temptations
theatrically tarnishing themselves
than transgress transfuse taint

two three ten twenty terminating
their theorem too terrifying tough
then those terms to their taciturnity
tattered tails to take themselves

their typeface thoroughly thick
their thunderstorms typically terse

BG 194 – Counting sheep

How on earth can you fall asleep while counting sheep?
If you don’t pay attention, you’ll lose count and have to start all over again!
And because you make those damn beasts up and don’t have to feed them, they are infinite in number. Baa! Baa! Baa!
That way you’ll never fall asleep, right? Argh!

BG 187 – Ajam and her Oriental rugs

The road through Ajam’s village on the dry plateau is a soft and colorful carpet almost all year round. Literally.
Ajam’s mother runs the local carpet workshop, where carpets in many different designs, colors and sizes are woven or knotted by hand by women and children.
Her mother told her that some of the most intricate designs have been made the same way for hundreds of years.
And when they’re done, Ajam helps spread the carpets out on the sandy road, so their colors can fade in the bright sunlight.
The villagers walk over the carpets. And they even let their donkeys and goats walk over them. Ajam and her friends play on the carpets, and the boys from the village play football on them.
And every now and then a car or a motorcycle drives through the village, also over the colorful carpets.
About once a week …

Read More »BG 187 – Ajam and her Oriental rugs

BG 186 – Artificial Intelligence

No AI (Artificial Intelligence) was used in the making of this Blog.

Everything you see and read on this Blog was made by me and is the result of my imagination, my creativity, my thoughts, my feelings, my intelligence, my knowledge, my individuality, my memories, my experience, my attentiveness, my fallibility, my sense of language, my talent, my effort, my faltering concentration, my perfectionism and my perseverance.

I have not illegally copied any sources of knowledge, violated any copyrights, or committed any intellectual theft (plagiarism) for creating this Blog.

Artificial Intelligence, on the other hand, is nothing more than super-fast reproduction and combination of other people’s data. Data that in many cases has been obtained illegally.
I don’t think intelligence is the right word for that.
What it lacks are empathy, (various levels of) awareness, conscience, feeling, morals, memory, self-correction, interaction, and everything else that distinguishes us humans from super-fast copy and combine software.

I wonder: …

Read More »BG 186 – Artificial Intelligence

BG 184 – Changed forever

They changed it, the sidewalk
in front of their house. They
put up a little bookcase there,
their ‘Little Free Library’.

Therewith they have changed
the experience of walkers and
cyclists on that sidewalk forever.
Henceforth those will think, whether

they like it or not, of books,
of reading, of shall I or shall
I not, of I’m actually in a hurry,
and I have no bag with me.

Or of: …

Read More »BG 184 – Changed forever

BG 183 – Haiku (EN)

suddenly through holes
in the fresh green canopy
burning summer sun

BG 180 – Have a nice day!

As they checked the last messages on his phone, before erasing them and setting the device aside to later give it to a niece or nephew who didn’t have one yet – after all, grandfather had been buried and no longer needed it himself, and they were engaged in the emotionally demanding task of sifting through some sixty years of collected items in his cluttered little retirement home and deciding what to divide among themselves, what to take to the thrift store, and what to the container park – they saw that the last message he had received while alive was from his granddaughter Maddie. It read ‘Have a nice day, grandpa!’ They were touched. Maddie was only six years old, had just learned to read and write, and had only had her first phone for a month.

Three weeks later, at the end of a fun day at school, Maddie said goodbye to her classmates before going home. She had first taken her friend Joris aside and solemnly wished him ‘Have a nice day, Joris!’, to which Joris had said with a smile ‘Thank you!’; after all, the day had already largely passed and she had looked so unusually serious. He watched her as she hopped away.
The next day Joris did not come to school. …

Read More »BG 180 – Have a nice day!

BG 178 – Multiple lives

Everyone is free to believe what she or he (or they) wants and everyone else is free to agree or disagree.
Life knows no absolute and unchangeable truths, no matter how much we try to capture it in our stories and firm beliefs.
Having said that, I am of the opinion that some people have misunderstood the subject of multiple lives.
You cannot convince me that there will be other lives for me after my death.
Not as a human being and not as another living being, such as a favorite animal.
And it just seems pointless to me if such a next life is all about punishment or reward for the current one.
The shelf life of a living being is finite.
I’m more into science and not into wishful thinking, also where my own life is concerned. When I die, it’s over for me, and that’s fine.
I also don’t like the pseudo-science that would have us believe that our ‘soul’ is a tangible thing, that *poof* leaves our body at death and that, weighing about 300 grams, then makes its way to a newborn next living being to live on in and learn new lessons in.
No, I think that, like all other living beings …

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BG 136 – Music and Time

One of the reasons we humans love music so much is that it gives us a grip on time. The time that often makes us feel powerless, by flying by relentlessly. We grasp it with music, connect it to tones, to rhythms and to melodies. We give structure to time and arrange it so that we can enjoy it. The basis of music is usually a fundamental rhythm, much like our heartbeat, or, on a grander scale, the coming and going of hours, days and seasons. That rhythm, that variable beat, dictates the tempo and keeps track of time for us. Precisely because life is so fleeting, we naturally like patterns and repetitions, recognizable rhythms and arrangements and unexpected deviations from them. Music influences our heartbeat and triggers emotions in us. We can influence our perception of time with the help of music and shape it to our own pleasure. And, unlike clock time, which is already behind us before we are aware of it, we can experience music over and over again whenever we want.

BG 105 – Kitty from Hamburg

Just last week he had called her. She had sounded cheerful.
“No, no, no, don’t!” she’d yelled, laughing.
“What’s that, aunt?”
“I was talking to Kitty from Hamburg.”
“To who?”
“My kitty!” she laughed, “I was talking to my kitty!”
“Ah okay.” That spoiled rotten cat of hers…
“She ran off with my bead again, hahaa!”
She had always been a little strange, his great-aunt.

And now she was lost.
This morning she hadn’t come to drink a cup of coffee with her neighbors, the Nose couple, at her usual time. She didn’t answer the phone, the newspaper was still in the mailbox, the back door still locked, and she didn’t even respond to the doorbell.
Oh my, oh my.
Couldn’t he come by with the spare key? …

Read More »BG 105 – Kitty from Hamburg

BG 102 – Sentence

Because when you get up, longer and longer, but shorter too, sat on the chair, that you look at things from a higher perspective, but from a smaller angle, from up there, to down down, yes, twice down, look, but just not see, because when you get up and get taller and taller, stay, stay in the same place; you can imagine that you down, that you go down, or maybe even back on the chair, but certainly not too long, and then she said, because you still have to, you, today, still do so much and think of so much, and then she said, but for that you have, that you don’t have time to get up, no dówn, to sit up dówn, but you must now actually go, or to descend, but that you today, that you now, would rather descend up than ascend down.

BG 94 – We are all writers

As a matter of fact, we are all writers. We all use language to tell others about things we have experienced in the most interesting way possible. Even if what we experienced – especially if what we experienced – didn’t seem that interesting in itself. We turn it into an interesting story with our self-chosen words and sentences, to impress our listeners.
A word artist is hiding in each of us.

BG 65 – Sentence

Makes herself bigger and wider than she actually is, steps so close to the offender that he forgets what personal space means again, finally accepts the glass of beer that she had refused time after time until then, pulls the young man’s half open white shirt under his black leather jacket forward, and pours the contents gracefully over his almost hairless chest, with a most friendly smile followed by a definite ‘I said NO.’

BG 1 – Behold my blog

Is life fun? Of course it is! You decide that yourself.
You decide what you watch and listen to, you decide what you focus your attention on.
Do I have all the answers? Of course not – I too just mess around.
But I do know this: those who indulge in creativity have no room for negative thinking.
Behold my blog.