to heal all ills

angel of the waters
look at me
in the reflection of the pool
i see myself
who am i?
i am no one
can thou cure such ill?

Faces (53)

The short stubbles of his scruffy goatee blended like a brightly colored motion of a pointillist painting into the detailed foam of ginger waves and the freckled splashes of his reddish face under an orange sky lit by a spiky haircut. His light blue eyes looked gloomy.

Faces (51)

With a pair of black, fleece ear warmers clipped onto his ears, closely fitting around his small head, his shiny, black haired skull topped by a wool, camel, flat cap, his large, falling nose mounted by metal rimmed, aviator glasses and his face colored by a dark brown, Indian tan, and the collar of his winter jacket pulled up high around his neck against the icy cold, the man appeared diminished to a suppressed, reprieved expression.

Silhouettes (1)

A tall, heavy, black man joggles his black fedora hat on top of his round head in a daringly slow motion from his left shoulder to his right shoulder, both bearing the heavy weight of a dark gray, woolen, long coat, balancing his total resistant gait by the wide sling of his right hand swinging a worn, black leather briefcase in a regular radius around his broad hip, propelling him forward in an un-hasted pace.

Bushwick Tales (1)

i wake up at 5.30am, from a drunk, hispanic laughter in front of my window, a cool breeze flows through my open window, on the doorstep of my house, two men in black baseball hats, three-quarter length cargo jeans, bid farewell to a friend on his way to prison today, the conversation is occasionally interrupted by repeated phone calls, where are you man? or the blase answer, in a light accent, changing to spanish at times, they're not saying much, mostly how loco and cool it is, cracking jokes about court day, i look up the weather forecast, it is going to be a cool summer day today, a slight chance of rain

Faces (50)

(50) Her face curves gently, as she stares at me, a wide gliding landscape with soft, broad slopes. Her deep brown irises beg me kindly from behind the veils of her obsequious eye lids, and beckon me with her full, red embalmed lips, for one more kiss.

Faces (49)

(49) His mandible grinds heavily from left to right, like a ruminating cow laying motionless, he stares blindly in the distance with wide open eyes. His eyebrows are contracted by a fixated frown into a widely shaped V spanning his forehead, the outer edges pointing up like the brows of an owl. Around the widely white eyes, heavy eye bags and fatty eye lids orbit in hypnotizing circles concentrically fixated on his doughy prey.

Faces (48)

(48) Her white freckled cheeks boasted a little tug nose, her nostrils stared at me like the eyes of a die. Her hair was shaven at her temples, while on top it dangled like long orange stems of reed that danced along with every step she moved. Her shy downward glance and soft hesitant voice revealed a Russian accent.

Faces (44)

(44) A heavy, dark and scruffy beard hung from his chin, hiding his bleak neck, and domineering his face, effacing the shape of his nose and his cheekbones, lending his presence an indistinct appearance, accentuated by the thin frame of his glasses and distracted by his straw hat.

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg (14)

Arnon started walking. He walked into the dark night and the bloated circle of colored lights. He was alone, but he barely noticed that he was while he kept on walking. It could have been snowing, or it might have been drizzling, or perhaps it was a clear winter night, he didn't remember. He did remember the blackness of the evening, the coat of dimness that isolated him and embraced him in one present gesture, and the brightness of the sparkles around him that amazed him. His eyes were drawn in all directions, drops of rain stirring a puddle of mud, and never lingered at one spot for more than a second. He couldn't form any prolonged ideas but only short impulses of thoughts. This state of mind itself fascinated him. It was not his nature to be caught up in such a stream of consciousness that constantly renewed itself. Arnon was more used to his own thoughts prolonging themselves and separating him from the distancing reality that surrounded him. The relation between Arnon and the world was vaguely undefined, absent perhaps in the eyes of some, at least not in a constant form that let itself be renewed easily. In what form the relation with the outside world existed then? Arnon thought of the world as a friendly enemy, a benign poison dripping into the hollow bowl of his soul until one day it would spill over and he no longer was himself. He kept on walking, alone, into the night.

Het Uur van de Wolf, Heb je nog steeds vrienden?

Serendipity (2)

it's a bright day, she smiles at me, she clinches to my mouth, a thoughtful answer, I look at her little straight thumbs in her lap, her brown wrinkled fingers forming a circuit of electricity, then she runs off, disconnects, but she comes back again, reconnects, and cuddling with a smile she says she loved the bright day we spent, and makes me happy on a dead motionless day with cold flowing love.
when the dark night remains, we sit inside a bar, outside a crying sky of aloof stars, a howling silence of murmur and simple conversations, of particles dancing between us, she sits and stares, her upper jaw of smiling teeth, she is full of inner love, she never stops punching back thoughts, i clinch to her words, my defenses low, but she folds her arms crossed in the rain, as we walk home, before her dearly flat chest, shivering and avoiding contact.
words and eyes, her long, thin limbs, a slim chest, all in a warm, brown gloss, she is a spider on the wall, a brief silence of admiration in which i can breathe and blink, of beauty and admiration, of the constellations of her web, i follow her rushing limbs, her flickering dark eyes that are like a falling star across the wall of the universe on the night's sky.
i can no longer distinguish between the sadness and joy i feel, between the light and dark i see, but the beauty of a moment of hope that crawled by in the hours of a long afternoon, blindly, now past us.

Faces (25-26)

(25) Not a harsh angle in her face but gentle curves, like rivers in a landscape carved out by soft force, the cavity of her cheeks eroded over thousands of years beneath the cheekbone, a captivating smile, her tiny black eyes like lanterns drawing nothing but kindness along. (26) The corners of his eyes and his smile flowed like the waves, all connected by invisible strings and moved by the muscles stretching from the ears, and modeled around the nose that bend like the stern of a ship across the facial front.

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg (13)

Arnon entered Lucien on first and first and asked for a stool at the bar. He looked at the menu without much appetite, then finally ordered the foie gras maison with the cheapest red wine at twenty eight dollars per bottle. It was the first time that Arnon felt comfortable in a social environment for months. He had concluded that his preference to stay at home and read, was a mental condition that he needed to break through, and diligently he had made reservations at nine. He drank his first glass and poured a second, drank a second and poured a third. There was no reason to his thoughts, he was not thinking, just realizing that he had not been thoughtful in many weeks. There was no purpose to his existence, cause there was no thought worth considering. This was the New York life that made New Yorkers unwillingly distressed, irritated, hasted. You traveled two hours south to Washington and life let you breath again. Arnon pondered only how this city with so much stimulation and diversity, managed to create such a uniform lack of thoughtful relevance. Was it the immigrants who came from poverty, sacrificed themselves to offer their children a better future, and like a maelstrom of ambition, they dragged Arnon down with them into their gutter toward just the same empty future. The thought itself made Arnon hate immigrants. He poured a fourth glass and measured the bottle to be half empty. The room seemed to detach itself from the street and the building in which it was located, and started floating in the night, tables started dancing, voices started conversations and faces looked at Arnon with a friendly smile. The waiter offered him not only a broad grin but complemented him with a pear liquor that went down smoothly with the foie gras without purpose or thought.

Faces (24)

(24) The soft curves of her face drew me in, with a few controlled strokes of a brush I could draw her gentle face except for the sharp splatters of her irises, that lay deep in their sockets, observing me with care.

Faces (21-22)

(21) The black stripes on her forehead were not her own natural eyebrows. She had drawn two lines too high above her eyes, in half circles. She looked wildly with a mimicked expression of lamenting surprise, her mouth open, her lips pursed in astonishment, as if a complete stranger had just slapped her in the face in public, while she scurried past me with a cup of coffee in her hand, busy, crazy. (22) Her face was lighted by a white-blue light that elevated her eyes, the same translucent color as the palms of her hand, the brown shadow breaking on her high round cheeks, her large, curling ears freed by a pony-tail in which her long black hair was tied, as if she was being upheld like a puppet by its string, as her fingers tapped gently on the screen of her iPad, which lay on the table before her, her face prostrated over it, pushing her shoulders above her neck.

Cityscape: All I Really Know About My Neighbor

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg (10)

Arnon sat at the bar and ordered another Brooklyn lager, supporting his head and leaning with one elbow on the counter. The trivial absurdity dawned on him of only being able to drink Heineken when he still lived in Amsterdam. Although he hated the bourgeois fetish with feeling good, its obsession with consumption and with being entertained, at least a man should be able to choose his own beer, Arnon thought. Heineken controlled what type of beer you drank in Amsterdam. He had escaped that controlled environment of Amsterdam, where life took place under a bell jar, and never took on a scale bigger than individual man, the way it did here in New York. Here, a man felt in control over his destiny in the grid of the city, here you could believe in an illusion still. The scale of reality pushed a man up to the thought to be still physically part of the life around us. Standing on the top of the Rock and looking out over the sky scrapers, seeing their golden domes, the glass facades, rising so high above manhood, that what remained were only dots. The people below look just like ants, and they counted for no more than ants. And yet, looking at the world from the top of this ferry wheel, one felt like a god, not subjected, but in control of the spectacle. How different, to stand on the Wester belfry in the Jordaan and feel the heavy heaven of rainy clouds fall upon the city, every moment capable of washing away the sinful souls, opening up to give way to a Biblical deluge. Here on the island there was no one to look down on Arnon.

Conversations (1-2)

1.
'So when they ask what the survey is about, what will you say?'
He pulled the dog, a chocolate labrador with a glistening coat, along by its burgundy colored leash, while his left hand reached back for his girlfriend's hand. She reached for his with her woolen mitten.

2.
'It is still very much up in the air.'
Her hair waved before her, covering her face. She pressed a cellphone tightly to her hear, and with short decisive steps hurried past me and an archaic chrome colored telephone booth on the side of the pavement.

Faces (20)

(20) A slender man, half long black hair combed backward behind his ears, glistening in a slick reflection of the lanterns, has buried his face in the womb of his elbow, his under arm leaning against the dusty rear window of an old sports utility vehicles, his hand dangling down by the gravity of despair, his other hand holds a phone to his ear. His face bows down to the street, the world around has collapsed into the one dimension of the voice on the other side of the line. His shine black curls wave left and right on the gentle shaking of his head, which is lost in nothingness, all of space, all of the city, its architecture reaching to the yellowish night, the bellowing of voices walking by, rising and dying out, the gospel of merry happiness of Saint Marks Place, is absorbed in the silent tears that fill a man's eyes, leaning against a rear window.

Faces (17-19)

(17) Her face did not just consist of layers, but of separate rolls, oil black blurbs hanging by a string from her jaw, her double chin a rubber tube, her cheeks two rotting apples, her eyes peering out like the outer shells of a pair of mussels, her forehead frowned like the shifting sand on the beach, her ears two disconnected joints, her hair nothing but a scuffled wig. Her hands like fatty claws just hang out of her sleeves, as she spoke with a defeated voice. (18) The tiny skeleton of an old lady, her head protracted from her neck, welded to her fragile shoulders by a single joint, her arms kept their balance like a wooden puppet, she moved in jerks. Her white scruffy hair was deceiving of her astute and kind voice. (19) Her face was marked by round shapes, her jaw and forehead formed a perfect circle, the bridge of her nose was retracted and hollow with wide nostrils, emphasizing the two round openings of the nose channels, while her large black eyes stared with a soft roundness, covered by the semicircles of her dark eyebrows, resting on her loving, bulbous cheeks.