SELF-PORTRAIT
I’m standing with my body in a shop-window and it says: ‘I have lost my memory.’
They’ve taken my brains out of my head – simply along one ear. I can hear now better than I could before, but don’t look anything up. I don’t need to look anything up. All I have to do is stand in a shop-window.
Complete and utter strangers pass me by. Everyone is a stranger to me – my children their mother, my mother. Yesterday, or the day before, I thought that I had no children, that they had no mother, and no more did I.
Of what the visit refers to as death I have a vague recollection.
After waking up from the profoundest sleep, I’m standing here as a talking doll in a shop-window and the first words that I say are ‘body’, ‘contact’, ‘flashing lights’, in this order, connected with nothing, devoid of any meaning.
I’m standing in a shop-window as the known result of a hushed-up experiment. I have been under the knife, with my knee in Siena, with my hip in Houston, with my arm in Amsterdam.
People have racked their brains about my brains – I have forgotten in what town this took place.
No matter what, behind ruler-straight scars unsuccessful operations hide away. Where scars have a serrated pattern healing is a slow process.
Of what the visit refers to as death I have a vague recollection.
I’m standing in a shop-window with my head that has been refashioned into a vegetable garden. On my head strawberries now grow, then tomatoes, and always long-stalked leeks galore. I’m just not with it any more.
I fiddle away at the wires in my head and pull one of them, two, loose, over, out.
My arms are bound to the bars of the bed, my feet to each other, my rump round the bedstead.
I cannot escape my punishment.
Of what the visit refers to as death I have a vague recollection.
I’m standing in a shop-window like a fleshed-out shadow of myself that can scarcely stay standing on fragile legs and internally continually washes itself with blood.
The forward steps will come perhaps a little later.
Who is ever able in whatever situation to say out loud the towering words now or never?
Of what the visit refers to as death I have a vague recollection.
I’m standing in a shop-window like a swimmer in swimming trunks and am hoisted into the pool sitting in a chair.
I cannot swim, but have to stand and tread. With tardy trampling I score success, confirm my existence. I’m getting there.
After practising with partners I’m standing like an ensign-bearer in a shop-window, I give a cell call with the remote control of the TV and call up charladies, carers and nurses. Everyone is at my disposal.
Of what the visit refers to as death I have a vague recollection
I’m standing with my body in a shop-window and am surrounded by limbs in plaster, by chairs that have wheels, by empty heads that are bursting with uselessness. I cannot lose myself.
* * *
By circumstances I have – completely time and again, the state soso, the present now – against better judgment and not of my own free will been transformed into the weary schizophrenic I probably now am.
Every time I get used to my new form – with hooks and with eyes, with screws and with plates put back together every time I more or less accept that I am as I now am, I rediscover something different. I no longer function as I thought I would function, as if that was what I wanted, as if I had been chosen for this.
I will attempt to abandon being as I was.
I look full of doubt around me and find perhaps something in my shadow about which I think: this could come in handy.
I grow along unresisting for the most part with what I will become.
· Essays · Toneel |
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Joris Iven |