Lola's secret - part 2

The Cadillac drove off the road touching the dirt shoulder. Lola steered the car straight and continued up the hill. She had no other choice than to drive to town. She really needed to go and tell the police what happened. Things had really gotten out of hand. Tony had gotten out of hand. She should have never allowed it in the first place.

Traffic signs stated the percentage of inclination and warned her to slow down. Lola switched back and forth between the throttle and the brake of her old car, hearing a mechanical grunt while steering the car up the windy road.

Lola knew this road by heart. She'd driven every mile of it a thousand times before. She knew how lonely this road was, laid out in the middle of the desert, making her commute to work possible. She loved how Route 90 was actually a scenic route going up hill first, topping Dead Man's Summit and then opening up to the desert valley glistening below.

Lola had seen this valley in every way, day and night. In the morning, the sun climbs above the mountains shielding the desert from rain, and as the sun revives the sky with red and gold, as if God himself had painted it, a subtle breeze would bring coolness to the valley.
At night, stars wink from above while the moon shines pale light upon a black vastness of land, lighting up the white road markers painted on the tar of the road that Lola was now driving on.

Lola loved how, after having reached the summit, she could just put the transmission into neutral and let her car roll down the steep slope that goes on for miles and miles until it reaches the middle of the valley, the place where the Colorado river eroded a deep canyon over millions of years.

She would often stop at the point where Route 90 veers away from the edge of the canyon, following the stream of the river. Not a lot of people knew that this was a perfect place for swimming and jumping of cliffs into the water. Lola used to come here all the time with her parents when she was younger, and she had promised Lizzy that one day she'll show her this special place, too.

"Dead Man's Summit - 1 mile."

The sign announced the last few curves before reaching the top of the mountain. This is where everything had started. One night, Tony and his buddy Frank had come home in shock, covered in dirt, looking pale like the moon.

Lola had just put Lizzy to bed. They'd enjoyed a fun night together, playing charades and dressing up like fairies. Spending time with her daughter was unusual for Lola, what with working nights and weekends at the diner.
Lola wished she could stay home with her daughter, or at least work part time during the day, but as a building contractor in this scarcely populated area, Tony could not put enough money on the table to support this.

That night, as Lola came down from the stairs, the first thing she noticed were the muddy foot prints by the front door. She followed them into the kitchen and saw Tony furiously washing his arms and hands, his shirt and arms almost completely covered in mud.

"Is that blood on your hands?" Lola jumped closer to the sink but Tony pushed her away. Frank sat down across the kitchen table, looking frazzled, reaching for a cold beer with fingernails as black as the night. He seemed to have already washed his skinny arms and hands, but still had his cap on, and bloody fingerprints were all over it. Lola's eyes switched from the blood stained cap to Tony. She grabbed his shoulder and tried to turn him toward her so she could see his face. But she didn't have the strength.

"What the hell happened to you ?" she said.

"Nothin," Tony turned off the faucet and reached for a towel. Frank seemed to disagree. He gargled in disbelief.

Lola looked at him. "Care to explain, Frank ?" He took a sip from his beer and shrugged.

"Better to keep it to myself," he said, " I wouldn't want my buddy to go to PRISON !"

Tony turned and loomed over Frank, supporting his weight by placing his two hands on the table.

"If you want to stay alive, you shut - the - hell - UP !"

Frank was not impressed by Tony's threat. He tried to laugh it off and took another gulp from his beer.

"Com'on Tony, be serious, in a town like this, somebody's going to find out a boy's gone missing."

Lola stood perplexed, covering her mouth with both of her hands. It seemed to slow down her words. "Wa-did-you-do, To-ny ?"

She quickly snapped to her senses as Tony threw aside the kitchen table as if it was made out of Styrofoam. It smashed into the china closet holding Lola's old vase collection. Tony grabbed Frank's throat and pushed him against the wall.

"If you say one word to the cops, I'll bash your fuckin' head in."

Frank tried nodding. He couldn't. Tony let go of him and Frank reached for his throat, gasping for air.

"But you gotta ," Frank coughed, "at least tell Lola."

Lola was still standing in the same spot, looking at the two men in front of her. Suddenly, in one minute, they had become strangers to her - this kitchen now felt strange to her, like some back room in a bar filled with the stench of beer and the sweat of fighting men.

Tony turned around and looked at Lola. His eyes were filled with regret, as if he wanted to apologize for what he had done.

"OK, I'll tell her." Tony said, and he put the table back where it belonged, slid the chairs underneath and sat down, and so did Lola and Frank and they shared beers and everything seemed normal again for a split second, like they were about to have a dinner party and Frank was the first one to have arrived.

Then Tony started talking..

Lola's secret - part 1

This has got to stop.

Lola wiped a tear from her nose and checked her face in the rear view mirror. Her hazelnut hair was messy, her blood shot eyes made her look tired, God she was tired, and her forehead was showing a sun burn; driving at noon in a Red Cadillac Convertible down desert route 90 was not something a local would do.

But she had no choice; he had pushed her out of the house this morning, throwing her stuff out the door, leaving her underwear and clothes scattered over the front yard (except for the white linen dress that he had given her for her 30th birthday, that was something she guessed he did not want her to have any longer), and one picture of their 6 year old daughter Lizzy.

"Somethin' to remember her by." Tony had yelled this morning as he'd flipped their daughter's photograph at Lola's chest while she was pleading to let her stay.

Of course, Lola had been completely surprised by all of this. At 6 AM, she was drinking a glass of water after a long night working the grave yard shift at the diner, sitting in the kitchen in her night gown, ready to go to sleep, when Tony stormed down the stairs carrying a leather suit case.

"What're ya doin'?" Lola said as she saw him place the suitcase at the front door. Lola looked up at Tony's face. His balding head looked shinier than usual, his green eyes were staring into space and the scar on his cheek made him look even more mad.

"You leavin' me ?" she said.

"No," he folded his arms, "You're leavin' us." He didn't look at Lola. He wouldn't give her even that kind of recognition.

A pause of silence, not the same quiet that Lola had been enjoying while drinking a glass of water, but a moment filled with anger, tension and the ache of a stomach that was now upset. Lola's heart pumped despair and disbelief through her body.

"W-What d'you mean ?" she said, as she stood up from her chair, her gown touching her bear feet. "Why?!"

His eyes shot an angry look at her. "You know why."

Tony opened the front door, that same door that had welcomed Lola to the house this morning after a hard night at work, and she looked at the gaping hole, the exit that would become like a kick out of the house.

"I have a goddamn right to know why you throwing me out on the street." She sat down again and gestured to the chair standing on the other side of the table. But Tony had no intention of discussing it over a glass of water.

He walked over to her, grabbed her by the arm and pushed her out the door. Of course, Lola struggled, kicking - screaming - demanding an explanation, but Tony was too overwhelmed by anger. She was pushed out on the lawn, falling backwards, her elbows sinking into the grass, followed by the picture of Lizzy that Tony flipped at her chest. The leather suit case flung open as it hit the ground beside her. And then he had shut the door.

She had stood there in her ripped night gown, holding Lizzy's picture, the world turning around her, thoughts shooting through her head, hearing voices telling her that what she explained to the police yesterday, might have been a big mistake.

PS. Part 2 is for tomorrow. ;)

Having goals in life in relation to abandoning fruition

In response to a previous blog about fruition, people have send me emails stating that how we as humans need goals in our lives to pursue, things we want to achieve and learn from.

This is how we evolve and don't stagnate.

I completely agree that we need goals and that having ambition to achieve something is a building stone of being happy in life.

But that still doesn't mean that we have to perceive this goal to be a realization in a future moment. If we refer to this goal as being in the future, that means you have not accepted the way things are at this very moment. All we ever need to achieve is what we have in this very moment.

How about wanting to pursue a goal that has obviously not materialized yet in this present moment ?

When we believe that we have already attained our goals, if we believe that this is already our reality now, then what we believe inward will also manifest outward. 'Cause that is how we perceive. What we mentally label inward, what we think, becomes our reality outward.

So if you want to achieve a goal, become something, learn something, get a new job, house, or whatever, then believe that you have already attained this, so that this becomes a part of you, IN you, something tangible, rather than something that lies ahead of you, OUT of you, not reachable.

This way you have goals not out of neediness, but out of 'havingness'.

Act from the richness that you have inside, act from abundance, instead of acting from lack of.

This way, you can achieve goals in life, without having to think your present moment is lacking of..

If I apply this to my personal life situation, then one of my goals would be making movies. I know getting a degree in film would help pursuing that goal, and that time-dependent thinking would say that I only can make movies when I have attained that degree in a few years and find a way to make movies.

But if I redefine what would normally be expected of you when you want to make movies, then I'm already making them.

'Cause in my mind, I'm already coming up with stories to shoot, I'm already visioning scenes and camera movements, I'm already casting or even see me acting in a film, I'm already thinking about how I would edit it, and so on. And the moment I have a camera at hand, the only thing that I will be doing is shooting that what I'm already thinking, or visualizing.

And that goes for so many things in my life right now. Sure, I need a job soon, but what kind of job ? Something I feel comfortable in.. so I'm not just looking for a job, I'm trying to visualize a job that I think I would feel good in. And from that realization, I take action and know that I will attain exactly what I'll need for my personal evolution.

How would you apply this to your life ?

PS. Does having a lot of time on your hands make you think or what !

Gridlock

Watch this amazing short film, made in Belgium:



Let me know what you think of it !

PS. It's subtitled in English, too !

Poll results and new movie trailer

I'm positively surprised to see that 3 out of 5 poll takers think their life is not boring at all. You see, I thought the majority of us would think that our life IS boring. We go to the same jobs every day, meet the same people, eat the same food every week, travel the same route.

What is it then that makes your lives NOT so boring ? Enlighten me :-).

There's one person that thinks chocolate is like a drug saving him/her from dying of boredom. (just kidding ;-))

And one person feels she or he has a mediocre life by just having fun. That's fine with me.

I'm glad to see that nobody feels miserable enough to shoot themselves. Yay ! *clappy hands*

There's a new poll for this week. Scroll down to take it !

Oh, and also, check out the new trailer below : it's the new Paramount production of KUNG FU PANDA !

The Mole

ABC, one of the biggest American networks, is now showing the real life TV program called "the Mole".

Yes, DE MOL, the Belgian TV show that was a hit in '98 on the Belgian network TV1.

In the end credits, names of Bart De Pauw, Tom Lenaerts and Michiel De Vlieger roll by and I think it is exponentially cool to see a Belgian format make it onto the American TV screen.

Hooray for Woestijnvis !

http://abc.go.com/primetime/themole/index?pn=about

PS. You can also watch the first full episode (which is really good) on this site (click on watch full episodes to try), but I think it probably won't work if you're outside of the US. Bummer, I know.

About a storm and buying a book.

The tornado warning that interrupted the radio broadcast of one of my favorite country stations was surprising, if not frightening. It started with a high-pitched distorted sound, like a satellite transmitting data.

*Piiiirrt*
"This is a message delivered by the National Weather Agency."
*Piiiirrt*
" A tornado warning is in effect until 4 PM for the following counties: Arundell, Ellicott, Bel Air, Baltimore.."
That's us!

I white-knuckled over the outer loop of the Beltway, driving 70 mph in an attempt to make it home before the rain clouds would burst and cause everything to flood. Plus, our Newfoundland dog Fai was still in the back yard and even though she generally loves water, a heavy downpour would be too much, even for her.

It seems that every time you really need to be somewhere, everything and everyone will get in your way. The cars in the endless one lane street leading to our house wouldn't budge, school buses screeched to a halt like every other block or so and school kids seemed to be crossing the road like turtles on a beach.
As people turned into the residential side streets, the road to our house cleared. I could finally put my foot to the throttle. I'd barely reached the front door when I heard thunder roaring and rain started falling from of the sky like a cold shower.

I was happy to see Fai hiding underneath the little porch roof. Of course, she didn't even realize what was going on. She hopped inside wagging her tail. She was happy to see me. Then immediately she started whining to get back out and play with her ball.

"No, Fai, now is really not a good time," Rain was pouring down like a waterfall. Some of the younger trees were almost blown horizontally from the wind.

Fai jumped on the chair standing in front of the window to see what was going on in the back yard. I still think it's incredible to see this 100 pound dog jump onto a relatively small chair, sitting her giant behind down to stare outside like an old lady on a gloomy day.

As I observed Fai sitting in front of the window, I was amazed at the brutal force of the winds swooping outside. I imagined cows and rooftops whizzing by our house.
But aside from the strong winds and lots of heavy rainfall, the weather was nothing like another Hollywood disaster storm movie.

Later that day Aki returned from work. I told her about our stormy adventure and she said, "A storm ? Really ? Oh, I never noticed a thing at the office."

That goes to show how local this kind of weather can be. I could've been hanging horizontally from a tree holding on for dear live and screaming for God as power poles and cars shot by.
I could see a 20 foot dump truck just leaping over my head as it gets sucked in by a monstrous tornado, while Aki would've been sitting in a meeting, discussing her elegant garden design over a nice hot cup of coffee.

Gosh, I just love to exaggerate.

Meanwhile, things have calmed down weather-wise, although with temperatures rising every day, Baltimore has become comparable to a steam treatment at a spa. I mean, every inch of my body exhales sweat. Yuk.

Right now, I'm sitting in the air conditioned Towson mall enjoying a large diet Coke as my patronage to the food court, enjoying a mix of odors coming from Panda Express (Chinese food), Flamers (fried chicken food), Villa (Italian food) and the occasional stench of garlic coming from Sarku Japan.

I just bought a book with my European credit card (a Visa) which, unlike an American credit card, has a chip in it.

This totally dumbfounded the newbie-cashier in Borders. She practically yelled out her cry for help through the intercom system (clearly, this girl is not aware of the fact that the concept of a microphone has evolved from a wooden cone that you yell through, to a very sophisticated electronic gadget that picks up, transmits and amplifies even the squeak of a mouse into a crystal clear sound.)

One of the customer service people standing in the cook-book section twitched and jerked his ear plug out as if he'd just gotten electrocuted. He glided over to our register and asked the helpless rookie what her problem was. Clearly he was indulging the fact that his what I assume must have been maybe two more weeks of experience behind this counter makes him the cool kid in town and that no financial transaction would go wrong when he's in charge of handling this complex piece of machinery.

He swiped my card and asked me politely if I could enter my pin code.

Our faces lit up : receipt paper rolled out of the pay pad. Transaction completed.

Then he spoke these wise words:

"So like, whenever you get like, a foreign card, just go ahead and put it in the system like a debit card." He closed the cash drawer. "That'll totally work."

The young cashier girl grinned. "Totally," she said, repeating the head cashier's lingo by means of acknowledgment.

The guy nodded, pleased with the respect he now had gained, and zipped back to the cook-book section.

"So where you from ?" the girl said, handing over my credit card.

"Europe," I said. I didn't feel like going into countries and all that.

"OOOOooooh !" The tone in her voice had this 'that explains it' quality to it. She studied me as if she was sure to find green alien ears sticking out of my head.

"Thanks," I said and walked away.

I can still feel her eyes burning on my back.

Bits and pieces for today

The weather has turned extremely humid again; thunder clouds loom over us, and we're waiting for a downpour that will make tonight's commute a living hell. I feel wet even though it's not raining (hey, maybe I'm just sweating profusely?).

And summer's back. Yesterday temperatures reached 30 C again and they will not drop below this threshold the next 10 days or so.

Mornings used to be crisp and cool, birds singing with new found energy, happy to announce a new day. Today our cheery friends whistled only muffled tones.

God, I miss dry and sunny California.

I'm going window shopping today. There are about thousands of books to browse, hundreds of CD's to listen to and it's going to keep me busy all day. I'm one of those people you can drop off in a Barnes & Noble, rambling like a tod in a bath of balls in Ikea.

I might even go watch that Indiana Jones movie. Finally.

PS. I got back from my previous employer that there are no job openings anymore. Plus I also found out that the Narafi full time day film school has reached its attendance limit, and because the 5 year program in the Art Academy evening school will not give you a bachelor's degree, I just feel totally fucked. On the other hand, thanks to my ability to stay positive I'm sure some other job prospect will turn up somehow, leaving me enough time and energy to pursue my passion in film. This, however, leaves me with unrest that I now have to accept and let go of until I'm back in B and can start doing something about it. I just wished everything would have turned out the way I planned it to. I was going to go back, start that job I know is a steady job, start film school and be all happy and ambitious the next 5 years. Now I'm left with the remnants of a plan that is hanging by a thread. I'm not giving up, though. Never.

I guess you could call me a buddhist

One of the most powerful teachings of the Buddhist tradition is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long as you're wanting yourself to get better, you won't. As long as you have an orientation toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or already are.

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not good enough. We think back to the past a lot, which maybe was better than now, or perhaps worse. We also think ahead quite a bit to the future - which we may fear - always holding out hope that it might be a little bit better than now. Even if now is going really well - we have good health and we've met the person of our dreams, or we just had a child or got the job we wanted - nevertheless there's a deep tendency always to think about how it's going to be later. We don't quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.
...
In one of the first teachings I ever heard, the teacher said, "I don't know why you came here, but I want to tell you right now that the basis of this whole teaching is that you're never going to get everything together." I felt a little like he had just slapped me in the face or thrown cold water over my head. But I've always remembered it. He said, "You're never going to get it all together." There isn't going to be some precious future time when all the loose ends will be tied up. Even though it was shocking to me, it rang true. One of the things that keeps us unhappy is this continual searching for pleasure or security, searching for a little more comfortable situation, either at the domestic level or at the spiritual level or at the level of mental peace.

Nowadays, people go to a lot of different places trying to find what they're looking for. There are 12-step programs; someone told me that there is now a 24-step program; someday there will probably be a 108-step program. There are a lot of support groups and different therapies. Many people feel wounded and are looking for something to heal them. To me it seems that at the root of healing, at the root of feeling like a fully adult person, is the premise that you're not going to try to make anything go away, that what you have is worth appreciating. But this is hard to swallow if what you have is pain.

In Boston there's a stress-reduction clinic run on Buddhist principles. It was started by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Buddhist practitioner and author of Full Catastrophe Living. He says that the basic premise of his clinic - to which many people come with a lot of pain - is to give up any hope of fruition. Otherwise the treatment won't work. If there's some sense of wanting to change yourself, then it comes from a place of feeling that you're not good enough. It comes from aggression toward yourself, dislike of your present mind, speech, or body; there's something about yourself that you feel is not good enough. People come to the clinic with addictions, abuse issues, or stress from work-with all kinds of issues. Yet this simple ingredient of giving up hope is the most important ingredient for developing sanity and healing.

That's the main thing. As long as you're wanting to be thinner, smarter, more enlightened, less uptight, or whatever it might be, somehow you're always going to be approaching your problem with the very same logic that created it to begin with: you're not good enough. That's why the habitual pattern never unwinds itself when you're trying to improve, because you go about it in exactly the same habitual style that caused all the pain to start.

There's a life-affirming teaching in Buddhism, which is that Buddha, which means "awake," is not someone you worship. Buddha is not someone you aspire to; Buddha is not somebody that was born more than two thousand years ago and was smarter than you'll ever be. Buddha is our inherent nature - our Buddha nature - and what that means is that if you're going to grow up fully, the way that it happens is that you begin to connect with the intelligence that you already have. It's not like some intelligence that's going to be transplanted into you. If you're going to be fully mature, you will no longer be imprisoned in the childhood feeling that you always need to protect yourself or shield yourself because things are too harsh. If you're going to be a grown-up - which I would define as being completely at home in your world no matter how difficult the situation - it's because you will allow something that's already in you to be nurtured. You allow it to grow, you allow it to come out, instead of all the time shielding it and protecting it and keeping it buried.
In other words, anything that you can experience or think is worthy of compassion; anything you could think or feel is worthy of appreciation.

This teaching was powerful for me; it stuck. I would find myself in various states of mind and various moods, going up and down, going left and right, falling on my face and sitting up - just in all these different life situations - and I would remember, "Buddha falling flat on her face; Buddha feeling on top of the world; Buddha longing for yesterday." I began to learn that I couldn't get away from Buddha no matter how hard I tried. I could stick with myself through thick and thin. If one would enter into an unconditional relationship with oneself, one would be entering into an unconditional relationship with Buddha.

This is why the slogan says, "Abandon any hope of fruition." "Fruition" implies that at a future time you will feel good. There is another word, which is open - to have an open heart and open mind. This is oriented very much to the present. If you enter into an unconditional relationship with yourself, that means sticking with the Buddha right now on the spot as you find yourself.

Right now today, could you make an unconditional relationship with yourself? Just at the height you are, the weight you are, the amount of intelligence that you have, the burden of pain that you have? Could you enter into an unconditional relationship with that?

Thanks to : "From Start Where You Are : A Guide to Compassionate Living" by Pema Chodron, Copyright 1994, Shambhala Publications.

A world of smells

Being subjected to the unfortunate symptoms of hay fever and having my sense of smell barricaded by a stuffed or runny nose makes me appreciate the times that my nose is actually clear, so I can scent all sorts of aroma's.

It even seems that, because of the occasional lack of smell, I've become more aware of smelling than before. Like a blind person that lost his sight and now has super hearing.

There are smells I am confronted with in this very moment:

A Cinnamon raisin bagel. There's nothing like it, so the vendor in the Bagel Bro Shop claims, but there's something about the smell of cinnamon in the morning that is just not quite right in my mind. Maybe it's because of the fact that I have associated it with the bread pie that my dad used to make for us when we were younger and living in the same house and that I feel protective over the fact that nothing else but my dad's bread pie can smell like cinnamon and raisin, purely out of nostalgic reasons.
Since we have bought a few of them and Aki doesn't really eat bagels in the morning that often anymore, I reluctantly toast them every other morning or so, smearing a bunch of whipped cream cheese on top to tone down the cinnamon taste.

Rotting flowers. I bought them last weekend to color up the living room. They're Memorial Day themed, a combination of white, red and blueish flowers. I really wanted to buy Day Lilies because I love the smell of lilies so much, but since they only had these, I forfeited for the star spangled banner type ones. Of course, THEY've never smelled like anything except for a neutral flower odor. If there even is such a thing.
Right now, they're not in a complete state of deterioration yet, but like the fan club of Morbids chant: you rot away the moment you're born.

Cat pee. I love cats but I hate the smell of cat pee. There are wafts of it that reach my momentarily cleared nostrils. I've become one of those people that sit quietly one moment and suddenly jolt into a frantic sniffing of air the next, saying:

"I smell cat pee."
*snif snif*
"Do you smell cat pee ?"
*snif*
"I smell it.. it's cat pee."

And then, as predictable as 2 + 2 equals 4, I start looking for the source and no corner or pillow in the house is safe from an ammonia attack. OK, now I'm exaggerating a bit here.

Dog heat. Yes, you can smell a dog in heat. Fai is in heat. She's licking her groin area more than is forgivable and when we go for a walk she pees every 30 seconds to get her smell about.
Other than that, she's still pretty calm, except for the occasional howl for male dogs in the area, followed by a visit of the always escaping pit bull a few doors down. If you wonder what dog heat smells like (then you're a very sick person, hehe), it smells like cheese. Not the good kind, but those really smelly ones.

The outdoors. Occasionally, in between all of these comfy other smells, I also get a sniff of fresh oxygen wafting in from outside. And with this, a load of pollen reaches the tiny hairs inside my nose and I start sneezing again and this precious moment of smell clarity is over.

A weekend out in the country.

This picture was taken yesterday afternoon at I believe half past 1 when it was rainy and chilly outside and the best place to be was tucked away in bed with a fluffy sweater on. This was not in muggy Baltimore but in a house that belongs to my NY friend Elaine in what she calls 'the country', which to Baltimorians is a 5 hour drive up North to Yulan, NY.

I was sleeping because of the unavoidable effect that going to the country has on you: you become overwhelmed by weariness and fatigue. However, our main reason for going to the country was to help out Elaine with all sorts of chores on the grounds, but the rain was preventing us from working outside. And so I ended up doing exactly what everybody does when they spend time in the country; I took a nap.

The nap was unintentional. I was actually reading a good book for a change. It was NOT the novel I spent 25 bucks on in Barnes & Noble, a book called "Enlightenment for Idiots" which the blurb on the back of the cover promised to be "a very entertaining read".
This is not a self-help book but an extremely sappy story about a wanna-be Yoga teacher who writes about traveling for Idiots - like the dummies series - for a living. The protagonist is a woman in her mid 30's who has a mindset of a 16-year-old and is preparing herself for a spiritual journey to India in search for enlightenment. But not before endlessly wondering if she could leave her boyfriend and all of the drama behind for two fucking weeks. I gave up on page 75. At this point she was still deciding if she should get a convenient, state of the art travelling bag or a simple giant black suit case. She wrote about it in her diary, talked it over with her friends, family and had about a 3 page discussion about this topic with some generic store clerk. I mean: how long can it take for you to buy what you need and get on a motherfucking plane? They should have changed the title of the book to : "An indecisive idiot." Big yawn.

So I surrendered to this bright, yellow book that was standing on Elaine's bookshelf that, as you can see in the picture, is resting on my belly. The book is called "How to be Good" by Nick Hornby and is an absolute page-turner. Again not a self-help book. It begins to tell the story of a female doctor who is doubting if she should stay married to her ever-complaining and utterly sarcastic husband or just leave him and be done with it. Then it elaborates on her dealing with her husband who's suddenly become enlightened by a spiritual healer. From being an egoistic and aloof character, the husband turns into an emphatic goody-two-shoes, nurturing a wish to cure the world from starvation. He suggests that every family in the world takes a homeless person in and provide him with food and money. To set an example, he invites a local bum into his own house which leads to various strange - but funny - situations for everyone. You see how this guarantees an entertaining story about how to create a better world.

Anyways, sleeping was not all I did that day. We went to the recycling center and visited some surprisingly authentic old towns in the neighborhood. It's a different world out here in the woods, there are different laws and it really is like in the movies where everybody knows each other and the sheriff pulls you over for no apparent reason. Well, you're likely to be pulled over for speeding, cause here you have roads that you could easily drive twice the posted speed.

And here and there you come across these typical family restaurants and saloons or antique stores where you can still buy wooden golf sticks. And finally, exactly when a thunderstorm of hell broke loose, we checked out of the local supermarket that made me think of the old corner store in the town that I grew up in.

Later that night I tried a new sweater that Elaine had dug up from her closet:



The skunk outfit didn't really fit me of course; the sleeves barely reached my elbows. But it kept me warm for our BBQ that night. Aki wore a hillbilly outfit and professionally grilled corn on the cob for us. We also had steak and shrimp and bell peppers and squash. The perfect meal after a day out in the country.

Today, Sunday, we stopped in Scranton, Pennsylvania to take a look at that church they show in the opening credits of NBC's "The Office" with Steve Carell. I absolutely love that show, the American version of the British original series by Ricky Gervais. It's about a paper company in Scranton called "Dunder-Mifflin". And even though it's actually filmed in Van Nuys, California, coincidentally the neighborhood where I used to live in LA, they mention Scranton and show us buildings from the town.. take a look at the album.

Film school

So meanwhile I'm getting my life on track so that when I return to Belgium I can pick things up where I left off.

I'm looking into getting a bachelor's degree in film. Not only have I realized that the realm of movie making is something that has been a part of me for almost my entire youthful life. As a kid, I was addicted to TV shows, as crappy as they were, Neighbours (the Australian version), the A-Team, Melrose Place, and so on.

The first movie I ever saw in the theater was "Home Alone". My friend Wendy can still vouch for my obsession with everything that has to do with this movie (NY, Xmas decorations and a bad taste for comedy).

When the era of video cams erupted, I was first to lay my hands on one. Michel, a former boyfriend of my sister Lynn, had this ancient monster that actually recorded film. This was the first time I peeped through a lens that was not my second hand photo camera I got as a Communion present or something.

But it wasn't until my brother bought his own camcorder that I really discovered the wonders of film making. I borrowed his camera and went to Spain with my niece and coincidentally made a horror movie that included a car speeding away from a house at night, a search through the ruins of a house, and my grandmother snoring like a monster truck. It became a classic.

In 2001, Aki and me went to the West Coast to visit Kirsten, and K was extremely generous to let me use her digital camcorder. I shot footage like a scientist discovering alien life on earth. Back home, I made 4 cute little movies from that trip. I used my first edit software and felt like a kid in Lego-land with all the gimmicks and effects that this program had to offer.

I believe it was for my 20th birthday that I got my very own digital video camera. Aki had arranged this. I was completely stunned. Not only did I now have my very own magical film recording tools, I was amazed at the generosity and kindness of everybody around me. I mean, what had I done to deserve this kind of present. I think it was the best thing I ever got next to the cake that my friend Elgertsje had made in the Wapper youth club. I wish I had a camera with me then to have marked this Kodak moment. I was standing behind the counter serving drinks when suddenly all of the lights snapped and a bunch of lit candles on a creamy cake zoomed over to me. I stood speechless and was fully surrendered to my emotions.

But as I was saying, not only have I discovered that film making is just my 'thing' (I haven't mentioned the countless times I watched my dvd collection and analyzed every shot or memorized my favorite lines), but I also really want to get a Bachelor's degree. Not just any kind, I want a film degree. I lived in LA and checked out the tuition fee for film schools. I think Long Beach film school was the cheapest with 'only' 10.000 dollars per year. Of course, the school you really want to get into is either UCLA or NY Film academy. Both in the range of 30.000 to 60.000 dollars a year. I mean, how could I ever raise that much money ?

I did some school exploring in Belgium (which kinda sucked cause there you are in LA, the movie capitol of the world with a lack of financial resources and now you need to look for a place that's as far from this city as the sun is from Pluto.) and found three schools: The Film Academy in Brussels where hand drawing is a mandatory class. Fuck that, I mean, I still draw a matchstick man with five pointy sticks for a hand and I have no desire to change that.

The other school is Narafi Film School in Brussels, which actually looks really cool. If I'd win the lottery and were able to live financially free for the next three years, I would so do it like, right now.

My only doubt is that I'm really sick of having no money, especially when coming from a place where I was financially worry free. If I could get a scholarship to put me through school, then this definitely would be something to look into. So one of the things when I get back to B is find out how this could work.

A third option was evening school in Antwerp. I was totally siked when I discovered that you could also do film at night. I had it all figured out; find a boring, got-nothing-better-to-do-than-poking-my-nose-and-feeling-perfectly-fine-with-it-too kind of job, go to class at night for the next 5 years and fill up any spare time with enjoying life.

Now I find out that this night school doesn't offer Bachelor programs, but you will get a part time attendance certificate to get you started after 5 years. Again, fuck that.

Well, I'm still debating what is more important to me. Getting to learn about this passion of mine without necessarily having to receive the credentials for it. Or sacrifice the freedom that financial security brings and go to school for the next three years.

Ah, life decisions are always so freakin' wonderful.

Intro to this blog - another one ? Yes - now read it ! :)

The word "real" in this blog title refers more to how this blog is going to be a reflection of what the real me is like, rather than the desire to question the genuineness of life.

'Cause all I know is what is real to me. All I can write about are the things that happen in my reality of life and how I perceive these things to be of value to write about.

And I want to be as real as I can be.

You'll find stories about my daily life here, stories about people I encounter in the street, on the bus or in a restaurant. You'll find quirky stuff and sad stuff, you'll read about my interest in film making, philosophy, music, stories, drama, and so on.

It all depends on where the roller coaster of life is going to take me.

The real adventure can be found anywhere. You don't have to base jump off of a sky scraper to feel alive. You just have to be aware of the fact that you are and that every moment is an adventure in itself, no matter how insignificant a moment may seem... you never know what's going to happen next.

So, this blog is going to be the most unpredictable one I ever had the urge to publish. I'm sure it will get VERY interesting for me to read again for years to come. Yes, years. I'm planning to stick with this blog for ever.

PS. Oh, there's lots to see and do on this blog, too. Check out the poll below and vote, or watch the trailer of a movie that I think is worth seeing in the theater. I'll keep it interesting by changing it every week !