Book edel 235

A•myg•da•lae The booktitle Amygdalae relates to the process that takes place during the shoot: impressions from the outside world can be converted into an image, a feeling, a memory. The amygdalae (we have two) are located in the brain and play a central role in the storage of memories of emotional events. Emotions are linked to certain sensory experiences and the related people, animals or objects that color our memories. Like this our amygdalae fill our imagination again and again.

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One dreams before contemplating, and that before becoming a conscious vision, every landscape is already an imaginary experience.

Jean Baudrillard

to my mother

Amygdalae

Edel Verzijl

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Foreword Title Merel Bem

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Preface

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All those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

F. Nietzsche

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We’re all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars

Oscar Wilde

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All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream

Edgar Allan Poe

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I have to change to stay the same.

Willem de Kooning

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A place not ruined

A story by Mark van Holland

And so you are back. They have put you on a plane and as sudden and unprepared as you left, you are back. Welcome home. As they said they would, they brought you as far as the front door. You recognized the area, the neighborhood, the neighbors, the way the light cast shadows on the streets, the trees. You recognized the garden, the house and the front door. As soon as the car stopped your mother came running out.

Open arms, smiling face. She says she’s so happy to see you. She says oh my god i’m so happy to see you. But all you can think of is how this house looks like the house you knew. How this woman embracing you feels and smells like the woman you used to call mom. But at the same time you are absolutely sure that this is not it. You have never lived here.

You don’t know this woman holding you.

We went inside and everything looked familiar. The hallway, the living room, the kitchen, everything was exactly as i remembered it to be. As if i had just left yesterday. As if i had just gone out to get a shotgun and returned within the hour.

Nothing changed.

I remember this place as home, as the place i went home to so many times.

This is our back garden. That is our porch, three steps up. Everything is the same. Everything. So why doesnt this feel like home?

If nothing else has changed then who am i?

We had lunch as we used to when i came home during school break and then she left to go to work. She’d taken the morning off, but now she had to go. She looked me in the eyes, all gloomy, her hand on my arm. I wish i could stay she said, but i just can’t, this is a very busy period. She told me to feel right at home and that she’d prepared my old bedroom.

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My old bedroom?

Had anyone else been sleeping there since? If this is our house i have never lived anywhere but here, i have never had another bedroom.

When does a person’s bedroom stop being a person’s bedroom? After how long?

Or is it me? Have I changed too much to still call things my own? She prepared my old bedroom. I am no longer the son, I am a returning customer.

Staring through the living room window. At our backyard. At my shed in the tree. At the quiet street behind it. Is it more quiet now?

I’m wearing my father’s brown shoes. They’re a bit tight so i can’t stop tapping my feet. Mother says they’re just new, they will break in soon.

Why did you keep them?

You have the same size, she said.

No, it’s not more quiet. The street has always been quiet. Remember?

I see how the sun levitates everything, makes the trees flutter and the grass float.

It’s been over a week and i haven’t been out. Why take a walk if you don’t know who you are walking with? I’ve been trying to get my thoughts straight. Trying to make my memories mine. Mom says i’ve not been doing anything. Which is also true.

She called our old doctor yesterday. Simply because i wouldn’t. I’m not sick, i said.

Well you’ re not well either.

I will have to go there this afternoon. He has been our doctor for as long as i live and probably longer. He was there when my sister broke both

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arms, he was there when father died and he will not be easily forgiven if he doesn’t manage to close my mother’s eyes.

Straighten up my thoughts. Who was I back then? What was I thinking?

There is no compassion what so ever. Like you can’t stand the mere sight of a candy you couldn’t get enough of as a child. My memories. It is as if i’m looking upon them from a cabin in a passing train. They are my memories of course, they must be, i am the one remembering. But they don’t feel mine. It feels like remembering someone else his inward thoughts. Like they have put another persons brain inside mine.

Doctor Whilterder asked me to describe how i feel.

I was late. We both didn’t seem to care. I came in on my father’s shoes and he shook my hand as if i was his long lost son in law. How have you been he said, in a similar friendly way.

I could do no more then try to reply with an open look, because i didn’t manage to utter anything. So we nodded and then he noticed that there were papers lying on the wrong side of his desk.

He sat down and told me to do the same. Back in his role he asked me to describe how i feel. My mother was a bit worried he said, but mothers have that obligation.

In my head i said i’m fine thank you, but my mouth told him i don’t sleep well. I lie awake for hours and then my heart starts beating as if i’d just run a hundred miles. The blood blows up my skull and i sweat like a maniac.

The last sentence came out sizzling, like i wanted to throw the words in is face. Why? Where did this convulsion come from?

The doctor listened to my heart with a stethoscope and pulled the lids

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down to look in my eyes.

Is there anything else he asked.

I doubted. Shame, no not shame, the feeling of lying, of being a big liar came over me. Whilterder saw it, he took a book from his shelves and walked back. He hesitated for a short moment and then he asked: Have you been with a prostitute while you were away? I didn’t know what to say, so i laughed. And calmed. It’s easier to get, than to get rid off, he said.

It’s nothing like that sir, i heard myself answer.

Then what is it?

I told him I didn’t feel like myself. That i didn’t understand it, but it was as if i did not recognize who i was. As if i never came back here. I know that i did of course, but somehow i didn’t.

He looked at me as if he knew what i was talking about. Did he?

I asked him for drugs. To sleep at least. I said i feel like i identified myself with the main character of a book. But now the book has finished and i am still in there, or i am living his live outside of it.

He sat down behind the desk again and took a silver pen between his fingers. Yes your mother told me you’ve been doing quite some reading.

That’s nice. But she also says you don’t go out much. I nodded.

Listen, he continued, physically everything seems normal to me, but you’ve been through a lot. Try taking a walk in the morning.

For a moment i thought that was it, he leaned back in his chair and just looked at me.

You seem to have light anxiety attacks at night, he went on, we can prescribe something for that. It will also make you sleep better. But i

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want you to try something different as well. He said i want you to start writing things down. It will take time to get used to this side of the world again and writing things down might help.

Like what? It was hardly a question, it came crawling over my lips.

All sorts of things he said. Feelings. Memories. Even little things.

He told me to write down everything that comes to mind. You can start with last week, he said, start with when you came back. Just think you’re still that main character and now your life is the story.

He stood up. That’s it for now. You’re a healthy man. Give my best to your mother. And as he led me to the door he advised me to look for things that felt real to me. Things that made me feel safe.

Don’t I feel safe?

Hello! Was the first thing i wrote down. Hello! I am back. But it made me feel pathetic so i tore the page out.

And now i’ve been stuck here for months. Unable to leave for reasons i cannot comprehend. The morning walks are a witness to my impotence.

They happened in my mind until they stopped happening at all. I’m stuck, although there is nowhere i should be going.

I just hang around.

Mother leaves me be.

When she’s away i watch television from the living room couch. When she’s home i read books in bed. She goes to work, does the shopping. I clean the house. She smokes, cooks, and invites me to dinner. She doesn’t ask any questions and i answer them with silence. Doctor Whilterder gave me more pills. Sometimes i think they started to work, but mostly

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they just drift me further away.

Some distant mumble. A faded picture.

Still every night i say to myself tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow i will get my act together. Even though it doesn’t feel like my act at all, i’m just acting out.

It’s like waiting for a storm.

Hoping for it to come and blow the dust from my brain.

I opened the screen door and there was nothing. Just too much light in my eyes; daylight that made me squint, that hurt without pain.

I could have sworn i heard something. There must have been... but nothing. No one. Just the same sunlit garden. With its withered grass.

With its one piteous tree, too small to built a tree house in. And with just that ugly tree house, gazing back at me.

Am i going insane?

Am i loosing it?

What am i doing here? Why did i need to come back here? What for? This house is a delusion. Something i wished for because i couldn’t think of anything better to wish. Because i badly needed to wish for something, for anything, if i didn’t want to give in to the feeling that all wishes were senseless, that even the idea of wishing was merely stupid.

But it is.

There was nothing waiting. Sham and make-believe.

When does a mother stop being a mother? When she loses the child, or when the child is gone.

Who am i? Whose eyes are these?

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Behind the white fence that used to be green the same dull street that tore the young flesh from my palms and knees is waiting for me. Is waiting for me.

Am i loosing it?

Still, something must have triggered me. Something louder, something heavier than the tv. I passed out on the sofa. Finally. Pills and alcohol, the cocktail got to me. Good to know that they still close, felt like a wide eyed monster for too long. I started to see red colors everywhere. Good to know.

But something woke me, pushed me to the backdoor and made me look.

Got me up here to look.

At nothing. At history.

A white fence.

A dead lawn.

A falling apart structure in a tiny tree.

What am i doing here? Writing it down.

Father didn’t want to build it, said it was impossible. The tree wasn’t big enough, not straight, the branches to weak. Impossible. But i whined and whined, i wanted it so bad he ended up building it anyway.

Okay okay, we’ll give it a go, but i warn you, don’t expect a....

The miracle took him a whole weekend of swearing and cursing. Not much of a tree house in the end, a deep and half open triangle against the curving trunk, but a castle and a fortress to me.

I spend most afternoons playing in and looking down from it. If i wasn’t involved in some blood shedding warfare between my toy cars, or indians and cowboys, i sat quietly cross legged and did nothing but peer

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into our empty back garden, which for me, held more than the whole world. It seemed as if i sat sleeping with my eyes open, but i registered everything that happened (not a lot), while in the back of my head the heavy battles continued unabated.

Just peering. And gazing.

The entrance on the front side was the only opening so there was just one direction to look in. At the garden and the porch, at the backside of our house. But that didn’t matter much. Everything was there. Everything i could possibly think of.

Just seeing. Imagining.

The whole universe in my childhood head.

But my imagination then wasn’t as strong as my absence is now. Although the worlds i created in my mind back then had nothing to do with reality, they felt more real than reality does as i’m standing here looking at the neglected garden. In those days i still took part. What i was peering at was a part of me as i was a part of it.

There is no part now. There is a world happening. There is a silenced bubble and i don’t know if the bubble is the world or if it’s me.

Maybe mother accidently slammed the door. That woke me up. Or on purpose, who knows. I’m starting to annoy her.

My numb behavior. My lack of spirit.

A memory of happiness. Out of the blue. Or maybe not out of the blue, i’ve been standing there, looking at the rotten thing. A memory from the dungeons of my mind, from a hidden place, from a place not ruined.

I am in the tree house and something bumps up to it repeatedly, or hits

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it with a heavy but soft object. BAM! I was far away, daydreaming as usual. BAM! I’m looking, but i can’t see it because it’s coming from the side. BAM! Trying to peek through the cracks. I’m moving like a trapped animal. BAM! Slowly i start to recognize the sound of the jet fighter from my daydream.

I put my head out and then i see him. Father bumping his shoulder to my shelter, again and again. Every time he walks backwards. BAM! Deliberately. Acting. Pretending not to notice me while he’s pushing and pulling the mower.

The moment our eyes meet.

Doctor Whilterder came by today. It’s saterday! Came in through the back garden. He didn’t bring any new pills so he must realy like my mother. She wasn’t there.

Mother ain’t here i said, she left early this morning. And because i didn’t really know where to i left it at that.

He asked me how i was doing and i lied, but i think he noticed.

And how is the writing going, he asked, as he climbed the stairs and met me on the porch. Have you found any memories you can appreciate?

I pointed out the hut and said, i believe my strongest memories are all bound together in that stupid shed over there.

He reminded me that as a child i had a very strong imagination.

As if that explained anything. It doesn’t, does it?

Are you saying i’m making things up? Or that i should?

Well anyway, he said, already on his way down again, but still looking at my forlorn hide-away, i guess you felt realy safe up there.

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The tree has shrunk. Must be. Shrunk like an old lady. It wasn’t always like this, was it? The hut still stubornly clinging between the wrenched branches. We just need to hammer it to the tree. How did i ever fit in there?

It was something our schoolteacher said. Almost every kid in class protested against writing an essay about an animal we had seen in zoo a week earlier. The teacher said, you know to write and read, you have paper, you have pens, so you’re almost there.

I just started collecting timber. Begging around in the neighborhood.

Stealing the occasional flat beam from a lawn (hiding them, and having to return them all when my father found out). Until there was enough to build a small barn.

And then i started nagging. We have all we need dad. It’s already there, we only need to hammer it to the tree.

And when he finally built it, only one and a half meter above ground, because the tree would not allow any other spot, i was every knight, cowboy, indian and super hero in one. I was the king of the castle, the emperor of the world and that prince on the white horse (for what did i know?). Every day after school i rushed through the cup of tea with my mother and climbed into my little hide-out. The floor and lower part as deep as a meter, the upper, not as deep as my father’s stretched out hand. No rope needed. I used an old kitchen chair to climb in, then turned around and, with a hooked stick my father called harpoon, pulled the chair in with me. The deformed shed was too small to put the chair down and sit, so i had to lay it on it’s back and play between the wooden legs.

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A berth in a shack.

Until i got old enough to lift it and balance it upon the roof. But even then, with the chair up above, there still wasn’t enough space to lie down, or just sit comfortably. Like a medieval malconfort.

My prison, my paradise.

I’ve spent ages there.

Keeping my sister out, pricking her with the harpoon when she came too close.

Stay away! stay away! This is my territory.

Playful but nippy.

She tolerated me only because she had to, her swing was hanging from a bough on the other side of the same wretched tree. In fact in the end that swing had been the biggest card up my sleeve. But that’s not fair!

She’s got her swing... so i shoúld have a tree house. And everything is already there.

When she was swinging the whole tree tried to hurl me out. Up, and down again. Her mocking legs passing me by in the corner of my eyes. My imagination chopping them off every time they did.

My fabled sword waving warning signs.

One day i lost grip on my stick and accidently hit her ankles. She sighed once, but went on swinging as if nothing had happened.

I backed off for a while, until i forgot about it and her feet in the flawless air next to my entrance started to irritate me all over. Her rocking legs didn’t fit my tree house fantasy and again i drew my splitting sword.

Out of the blue she grabbed it and on her swing back she roughly pulled me out of the hut. Head first, face down.

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I broke my nose that day. Although my father had promised my mother i could never hurt myself falling from only one and a half meter.

And not long after that he died of cancer. I don’t know why these memories are stuck together or how long they have been. But i see myself falling on the lawn and at the same time i see my father in his coffin. Not bloated as the dead i have seen recently. Rather peaceful. Almost tender.

It was everywhere. He must have been sick for years, or at least months.

No one knew. Doctor Whilterder said he must have known himself, he just had to be in pain. But he never budged and i still don’t know if that was courage or cowardice.

What am i doing here? Ruminating.

There is no reason to stand here. In this nicotine odor, mother’s ghost presence, mother’s stinking footprint, draining from the porch like steam after the rain.

Cancer got to him, not to her. She stupefies nature. Spits it in the face and laughs.

This can not be what i was looking for. Pondering. Reminiscing.

Is it?

I ran inside screaming that day. Blood pouring on my shirt.

Kitchen, living room, hallway, living room. A red drizzle dance. Up and down the stairs. My sister chasing me. In and out all three bedrooms.

Where was she?

Were where you mother?

When i couldn’t find you i stopped and as i stopped i noticed that the pain wasn’t that bad anymore and the bleeding had ceased, or there was

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no more blood to spill. Nevertheless my sister slapped me in the face.

Be quiet!

I was!

You weren’t!

I was.

Stand still!

And before my eyes could grow with amazement, she took my nose between her thump and forefinger and straightened it. Snap.

Snap... I hear that sound now. At that moment i didn’t hear a thing, i only felt a pang, a sting that in a strange way felt rather nice; painful, but with a promise of relief.

Stupid, she said, you stupid fool.

Then she looked at me with wonder for five seconds and said: i’ll give you a dollar, you little prick, but you may never mention this to anyone.

She took a dollar from her pocket and unfolded it in front of my face.

Now promise... Promise!

Okay.

No, swear it.

Okay okay (eyes to the floor), i promise.

When we buried him i couldn’t stop crying. I don’t think i really knew what i was crying for, what dead actually meant, but i knew there was something tremendously wrong and i just couldn’t stop.

That whole day is a black hole with tears pouring out of it.

All i remember now is mother dressing me and cursing at my dirty shoes. Sitting next to my sister in a strange car. The smell of leather and

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an unbearable silence every time i gasped for breath.

And i remember my tree house the next day. Hanging there. Clinging.

Nailed. for the first time i saw how useless the tree was. How hopelessly humble. I climbed in the shed and nothing came. Normally different stories would start as soon as i put the chair down under it. I just had to pick one fantasy and i could live it for hours. But this time nothing.

I emptied the box of cars i had brought onto the floor. They were all dead and all i could think of was hitting one with the other as hard as possible.

I saw my sister come out the backdoor, turn around and walk back in again. My violence made me feel ashamed, but there was nothing i could do, i just wanted them destroyed; the little yellow windows scattered, the tiny wheels bend and broken. For some reason i thought there was a connection between the tree house and my father not being there.

It was something i made him do, however sweet my plea, i made him build it. And having to do things makes people sick. This i knew from my mother’s morning coughs because she had to smoke. I’m fine son, i just need a cigarette. From the pills my grandfather had to take and that made him ‘die more slowly’. So i blamed my hut. And then i blamed my tears, my toys, my fantasies. I blamed everything i felt close to. I mumbled promises out loud that if everything would be back as it was i would never play again. I would never again climb in my tree house, i would break it down myself. I would pull out every single nail if things would just go back to normal.

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(Mother) I’m sure she wants me out. She doesn’t want me to go, but she wants me out.

From: Laurence W. Albin Notes from the in between 23 September 1951 – 4 October 1957 archival research and editing (thank you Ellen Roberts-Whilterder for letting me in): Mark van Holland

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This was all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see.

R. Kipling

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Thank you | Acknowledgments

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contents Pictures in order of appearance: 1. 2. 3.

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AmygdaLae by EDEL Published in a limited edition of .... copies, numbered 1 to .....

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Photography by Edel Verzijl Book design

by Baukje Stamm Foreword

by Merel Bem Story by Mark van Holland © Edel Verzijl 2013 © Baukje Stamm, BAU+MM 2013

Printing by....

ISBN 9789462283367

199

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All the world’s a stage ...

The work of Edel Verzijl work strikes us as the kind of work inspired of the vaporous feeling of the human condition and its interactions not only with other people, but with its own surroundings, especially nature and colors. And again, even in her black and white work you can perceive them as if by magic. There is also a very close relationship in all the elements she cleverly combines, the stillness becomes movement, and vice-versa, there is an endless interplay in her compositions, as if she was directing a theater scene where even glass becomes alive.

Darkness takes a whole new meaning, since its very presence gives life to all the other “actors”, a virtue very well known by Vermeer and his colleges. The sfumato effect, one of Verzijl’s signatures is quite mysterious, like a rare fragrance has an effect on her photographs ,one is only aware of it too late, since by then we are already in a ethereal otherworldly mood. The very feeling we get when we see the timeless and sensual elegance of silent movies, that opalescence of the skin, almost angelical, with an air of supernatural innocence, yet chick to the bone.

There is also that very fine almost indistinguishable line where there is artistic and commercial work, you would say it is more to the artistic side than anything else, since her work ethics are undeniable uncompromising on that respect.