Waking Up The Birds

Tricky, she dreams about the dead birds. 

Sometimes I wake up very early to wake up the birds. I go outside and meander across the lonely streets. I pass the closed curtains of all our neighbors. I smell the scent of fish. I watch the fainting night. We have a little park nearby our house and I walk there. I walk there to enter the swamps of the Dutch morning murkiness. In the park I start to whistle like a bird. A little later, at least one bird awakes and answers me. I whistle back. We whistle back and forth. In a little while more birds whistle back and forth. Soon the swamp is filled with an orchestra of twiddles, and I’m a part of it. My heart fills with huge contentment if I do this. The idea I wake up the birds earlier than they wanted to wake up, gives me the feeling I make a difference to this world. I cannot figure out why it gives me the feeling I make a difference to this world by waking up birds, but I started this happening when I was eight years old.

Dead Birds

Birds. Picture: Daphne Buter. 

Yesterday our birds died. We had two birds, and they were very much in love. We aren’t sure what killed them, but we believe it was an aggressive virus that exterminated them both in one night. Okay, I'm pissed off about this, so, that's it for today. I have nothing more to say.

Amen.

A Terminal Winter

Ok, this is me, but photoshop made me look better than in real. Who cares. The internet is a hoax. Picture: Lente Buter (13) 

It was winter and I stood in front of a frozen lake. I had gone there on my bare feet, to feed herons. It wasn’t a normal winter. I don’t remember a winter as arctic as that one. It felt like my mother had already died. It felt like I wasn’t there. It felt like I had no feet. I was incarcerated by a cruel terminal winter.

I had bought glistening fishes and they looked so perfect. I couldn’t stop touching their silvery skin. It began to snow and Herons ate tinsel from my fingers. I remember the sound of their wings. It was a brushing sound, and in my visions it was the sound of brushing lips. I closed my eyes to resurrect into an image. I began to fall in love with somebody, but I forgot his face, his name, his dick. The sound of brushing lips exploded from the heron’s wings. It was the kind of detonation I sometimes experience on the inside of my cranium.

Big Bill Broonzy Shot In Amsterdam

One Of The Stupid Pictures My Father Shot Of Big Bill Broonzy In Amsterdam. 

Interestingly enough my father didn’t want me to become a writer. He said, ‘why in the world would you like to be a writer? Every sonofabitch can write. Writing is only a matter of holding a stupid pencil in your stupid hand to write something stupid down on a stupid piece of paper, and that is how writers write their stupid stories.’

Now, just think about the fact my father was a photographer. All he did was hold a stupid camera in his stupid hands while he pushed with his stupid fingers on stupid buttons, and that is how he shot his stupid pictures.

The Fishy Bird

One Of The Paintings I Made When I Was In A Good Mood... 

I Was A Child And I Dreamed This Same Dream All Over Again...

I was in a labyrinth of doors. I knew there was a way out, but I also knew a creature that looked like a fishy bird soared through the rooms behind the doors. I knew it was a bird of stone. If the creature found me, it would destroy me. Every time I opened a door, I entered a room with 6 others doors in the walls. I had to choose one of them, but behind any door was a room with 6 other doors. It was a never-ending labyrinth of rooms with doors.
All the walls of all the rooms were a cerulean color and looked like skies or water. I opened door after door, walking trough cerulean room after cerulean room, while I felt haunted by the bird of stone. Unexpectedly the bird of stone swam or soared through one of the walls, like the walls were no walls at all but made of soft tissue, and it attacked me. It attacked me by speeding in my direction and putting its beak around my face. It tried to swallow me and I fought with it until I escaped. A huge fear of death filled me up. I ran from door to door into room after room and whatever door I picked, I always entered another room with 6 doors.
Finally I opened a door and all of a sudden I was no longer in the labyrinth of doors but on the shore of the North Sea. The sky had the color of dust and the Sea was wild as on a stormy day, although I didn’t feel any wind blowing. I noticed I was naked and looked around me if anyone was at the beach could see my naked body. The beach was completely deserted and a thick mist covered the view. Even though there was no one there who could see me, I felt ashamed and fragile being naked. I started to run in the direction of the untamed sea. Now I felt a strong urge to hide under the surface of the water, to hide for the bird of stone. While I was running over the endless beach I remembered I had nearly drowned when I was three years old, and that I was afraid of the water since then. Nevertheless I wanted to shelter in the gray waves that looked like heavy jaws, like hungry maws.
I ran naked through that colorless landscape of sand and mist as fast as I could. I ran until I stumbled because something grabbed my ankle. I fell on the beach and saw a hand pointing out of the sand, holding my ankle. I felt panicky, recognising the hand as my mother’s. I squeezed her hand six times to let her know I understood she needed help and she let go of my ankle. Rapidly I started to dig away the sand around the wrist, trying to save her now that she was buried alive. While I was digging the sand from around her wrist, the fingers of her hand opened and closed like a flower, as a signal I had to hurry because she was suffocating. After a little while, when I had only hollowed out the sand around her elbow, her fingers stopped moving and I knew she had died in the sand and that it was my fault. I kept digging sand away, crying, and when I looked up I noticed maybe a thousand hands sticking out of the surface of the beach that were opening and closing their fingers like flowers.
I looked at the sea and the waves came to rest. Above the water the bird of stone hung motionless in the sky, and it accused me with the look in its blistering eye.