HEROïNE
STUDENT MAGAZINE OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS
Year 4 nr. 1
Cuckoo’s Nest
colophon Year 4, Volume 1 2016-2017 Text editors: Daniël de Vries, Besiana Vathi, Dianne Teunisse, Anna Sbitneva, Laura Pannekoek, Eveline Mineur, Awethu Kakaza, Joep Harmsen, Carlota Font Castelló, Noura Borggreven. Image editor and design: Kat Lybanieva Illustrations: list on p. 41 With special thanks to Fabula Rasa. Contact and submissions: redactie.heroine@gmail.com facebook: Tijdschrift Heroine twitter: @tijdschrifthero Do you want to subscribe to our magazine? Mail us. You can choose between an annual subscription (€8,-) or a subscription for two years (€15,-). Would you like to be part of the creating process of this magazine? Please contact the editorial board. We are also looking for new stories and images for our next issue:
Contents
Editorial the editors Close Behind Kat Lybanieva ROOKSCHADE Jante Wortel Escape FROM new DORK anonymous Homergasten the guest: Tim Yaczo Knaag en Raak Iris Mathilde van der Werff A Matter of Time Eveline Mineur Strength Sushanth Shyamsundar The Two Terrors: Depression and the Media Julia Neugarten Instructies Voor Het Wachten Joep Harmsen Bramen Plukken Erwin Hurenkamp Jason Jack Caulfield
4 5 8 12 13 16 18 20 22 27 28 30
Editorial A cuckoo’s nest is where the fun happens. Everyone is crazy in there but everyone is crazy together. Despite ruling over the hospital with an iron first, psychiatrists can’t stop the wild emotional roller coaster and sheer drama inside of a psych ward. Real life is not very different from a psych ward. Ultimately this thought drove us to choose this theme. A theme usually has a very niche appeal but if we try hard enough we can relate it to ourselves in some way. Everyone knows what it’s like to find a cuckoo’s nest at least, to discover others who are not necessarily going through the same thing but are experiencing some stigma from some authority figure or social norm. The feeling of discovering the nest provides a sense of relief when you too are feeling a little cuckoo. Especially when everyone else around knows that everyone’s case is so particular and because in craziness there can be no normality, empathy is key to the survival of the self and the community in the cuckoo’s nest. We hope in effect that the following works here will get you feeling like you’re in the cuckoo’s nest even when physically alone. ~ the editors
•5
Close Behind
by Kat Lybanieva
I don’t know how long I‘ve been here for. Time doesn’t really pass for me anymore, one day blurs into the next, week after week. But I guess time doesn’t pass for those who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. My room, or should I say cell, is tiny, with only a metal bed and an old, cracked sink. The bed has restraints attached to it, but I no longer need them; according to the medical report I am responding well to the medications and can enjoy my relative freedom. The dull yellow walls are padded, they said it’s “for my own safety”. I don’t have a cellmate, and to tell you the truth I’m not sure how I feel about it.
It would be nice to have someone to talk to but when you think about it everyone here is too much like me: a monster. On the other hand, I always have the Moon to talk to, when it gets too lonely. Though sometimes it doesn’t come out or it hides behind the clouds. On those days all I can do is stare into the darkness and think about everything I‘ll tell her when I see her again. She never replies; she used to for a time but now the meds have silenced her. Now all she can do is listen. I told her how it all started after my father’s funeral. I thought I was finally free, now that he was gone, but his hold on me remained, choking me, like a noose around my neck. At first, he only spoke to me in my dreams, but soon enough his voice became my constant tormenting companion in life. He kept calling to me and telling me what to do, criticising everything I was proud of, just like he used to when he was still alive. The only way to
6 • Close Behind
silence him, at least for a while, was to follow his instructions. They never made any sense to me but it was the only way to get some sleep. He never approved of my friends, he hated Jordan, my best friend the most. Father always said he held me back and that I couldn’t trust him. One night his voice woke me up, forcing me to go to Jordan’s house. Father blamed him for stealing his watch, the watch he had been buried with. I knew it was a lie, I didn’t want to do it so I took some sleeping pills but his voice kept on echoing in my head, like thunder. I tried to ignore it but he wouldn’t stop yelling, my head was exploding with pain and I couldn’t fight him anymore. I remember driving there barefoot in my pyjamas. He wouldn’t let me get dressed. I remember how easy it was to get inside through the garage door that Jordan never locked. I remember the look of surprise on Jordan’s face when he woke
up to find me feverishly searching through his belongings, looking like a complete lunatic and how his expression switched to fear when I drove a pair of scissors into his stomach. Without saying anything he slowly slid down the wall, his eyes rolling back. Then, my head was pierced by the screams coming from behind me. The noise around me morphed into a chaotic whirl of unidentifiable sounds and I couldn’t tell who was screaming anymore. Standing in the middle of Jordan’s room with a pair of bloody scissors in my hand, all I wanted was to wake up. But I didn’t. Instead I was brought here and everything froze in time. I still hear my father’s voice sometimes, when the breaks between my medications are too long. I hate it, I’d rather listen to the Moon than my father, she’s the only one who doesn’t blame me for what I’ve done. She knows it wasn’t my fault and how much I cared about Jordan.
I told her about the first thing I saw when I entered the common area: a scruffy old man in a stained grey robe hysterically laughing in the corner while banging his head on the wall. It took four nurses to stuff him with pills and take him away. By now I’m well used to it, stuff like that is pretty normal here. I told her about Molotov Mike, who joined us after throwing Molotov cocktails at a primary school. I only ran into him once, and was left with a fractured cheekbone after the orderlies pulled him off of me. I also told her about a patient who was chasing one of the doctors with a mop down the hallway and about a quiet, middle-aged lady who somehow got her hands on a pencil and stabbed one of the doctors in the neck with it when he tried to take it away.
Kat Lybanieva • 7
Things like this happen here all the time; it is hard to keep track of things. Did it happen on a Tuesday or a Wednesday? February or March? This year or last year? I don’t know. I don’t know how long I’ve been here for. My empty room with soft walls has no windows.
8•
ROOKSCHADE by Jante Wortel
1. ik loop een brandend appartement uit omdat er brand is mijn hoofd voelt als een opengespleten tennisbal en mijn handen spartelen het meisje dat elke avond rondjes over de binnenplaats fietst staat te huilen met een ijsje in haar hand waarom belt er niemand waarom belt er niemand wanneer belt er iemand om met vanillesmaak de brand te blussen? 2. we gaan schelpen zoeken, stel ik voor ik vang het zand met mijn handen onderschep de korrels die je opgooit en door de lucht mijn kant op waaien wie zit er aan het kralengordijn wie van jullie heeft de deur opengelaten waarom ligt mijn nachtlamp buiten ik ben een ingegraven weekdier en wacht tot de modder mijn neus instroomt
Jante Wortel • 9
3. van het balkon springen leek me ooit de veiligste manier van afscheid nemen de inhoud van de servieskast zit opgeborgen in mijn koffer ik trek hem mee over de reling vertel mijn moeder: ik ga op vakantie, mama 4. er was een man met een donkerbruine hoed die mijn naam niet kende er was de jongen die ik elke dinsdag naakt dacht er was een vrouw met een helikopter en twee vissenogen terwijl ze me optilden tekende ik een zon op haar voorhoofd eerst alleen de cirkel later ook de stralen zulke mooie zonnestralen ik wilde dat mijn zon mooi was en aan iedereen dezelfde aandacht besteedde niet evenveel, maar dezelfde
10 • ROOKSCHADE
5. de kans dat je een traumatische gebeurtenis overleeft zonder lichamelijke of fysieke schade is zeer gering de kans dat je daarna nog tot tien kan tellen is groot of in elk geval groter als ik panfluit kon spelen was dit niet gebeurd als ik die banaan had gegeten was dit niet gebeurd als ik een hond had genomen was dit niet gebeurd waarom heb ik mijn telefoon niet meegenomen
Jante Wortel • 11
6. de kunst is alles te blijven zien door een natgeregende autoruit blijf zo stil mogelijk liggen maak de dekens van staal en adem door je mond in en uit herhaal dit je weet dat je anders te weinig lucht krijgt 7. ik ben alsnog met haar een ijsje gaan halen het strandhuis had een loopplank van verrot hout en ik zei: daar moet je voor uitkijken voor dit hier daarvoor moet je uitkijken
12 •
• 13
Homergasten
the guest: Tim Yaczo In Homergasten we ask a guest contributor about a personal favorite in the realm of literature, theatre, film, TV, or otherwise. For this volume we asked lecturer Timothy Yaczo at the Faculty of Humanities, whose work centers on neuronarrative. Here he discusses the concept of home and home-building in Christos Tsiolkas’s short story collection ‘Merciless Gods.’
In contrast to the Cuckoo, metaphorically speaking, I am disposed to nest-building. But that’s an ideal self-charaterisation: kinship with the Cuckoo does come when I usurp or appropriate the nests of others. Admittedly, that activity is partly the outcome of chance, necessity, and privilege: I have had to find at least ten different nests to call home in three countries over the past decade. New flat mates and friends, various nooks to stash and read books, assorted glassware to acquire and guests with whom to share toasts. Sometimes, when seeking nests, one must risk pushing harder or submitting to unknown risks; finding a home and the feeling of being at home is messy. Welcome intrusions, which risk becoming unwelcome, find an analogue in the title story from Christos Tsiolkas’s collection Merciless Gods. In it, a group of acquaintances gather for a dinner party at a house: ‘Though the setting was perfect it could not be said that we were all
completely at ease as we popped the cork from the first bottle of champagne and filled our glasses’ (3). Here, the ‘anxiety’ of the disparate pairs of couples, colleagues, classmates, and friends-of-friends sharing space together ‘entered our drinks and our food, we breathed it in’ (3). Over the course of the evening, an intimate game of storytelling goes awry. The gathering fails. After one character’s gruesome tale and a vicious altercation, most guests depart feeling shattered. ‘That evening marked the end of our social group... We fell apart’, the narrator reflects (45). If anything marks Tsiolkas’s writing it’s his exploration of characters grappling with a sense of home, who forage across geography and through emotions while confronting the potential for or the aftermath of a wound. Tsiolkas is a master of the complexities of the tear, the violation, the social transgression. His protagonists often repulse me. The stories regularly unsettle. Yet, Tsiolkas is relentlessly
14 • Homergasten
generous, too; he hosts hostility and hospitality in narrative architectures large enough for all sorts of messy empathies to roost. I am drawn to his writing even when I am not at home in his stories. Tsiolkas’s works temper my own conceptions of home as a multi-nested place. I grew up the son of two first-generation parents in the US, and my large family—cousins and great aunts spread over different states and even countries— ushered the sense (using English) that home was a land called Hungary. I don’t know who currently resides in my childhood house. I have dwelled in Europe, as well, for nearly a third of my life. There’s no firm way to think of ‘home’. In Dead Europe, the Australian-reared Issac navigates his family’s Greek heritage while feeling estranged from its history, culture, and language. ‘Isn’t the theme of homesickness, of exile and return, irrelevant to modern Greece?’, an interviewer
asks Issac about his photographs during the protagonist’s first visit abroad. The question could just as well be posed to Tsiolkas himself, or to me in a different context. While Issac acknowledges that ‘... the Greece I knew in Australia was indeed largely irrelevant to these modern Europeans’ (35), it is only later, through his mother Rebecca, that a reader exercises an uncomfortable strength regarding that intimate distance: ‘It struck Rebecca that if migrants were to form a nation, they could conquer the earth’ (401). Vanquishing homelessness by conquest of the Big Nest remains a flippant fantasy, and Tsiolkas teaches not to romanticise the sentiment: Dead Europe, Barracuda, and several of the stories collected in Merciless Gods share a constructive pessimism. The characters in those worlds acknowledge complex kindnesses and hostilities toward estrangement and intimacy by negotiating those
frictions. Foraging for home involves activities that disturb and disrupt, but can also nourish new belongings and unexpected ways of nesting with each other. Importantly, the narrator in the story ‘Merciless Gods’ processes that fateful dinner party only years later. In his bird’s-eye hindsight, it scars it over as ‘the delusion of youth. We were far more ordinary than we believed ourselves to be’ (45). Likewise, while often feeling extraordinary, being present for new nests or presenting my nest to others involves exposure, but that vulnerability may not remain merciless. Perhaps the gap between nest and home, in Tsiolkas’s stories, exposes an emotional and political tool that is not always an injury requiring remedy via fortification or flight.
• 15
16 •
Knaag
by Iris Mathilde van der Werff Wat kan ik nog zeggen als iedereen praat? Knaag dan aan me, vraag dan aan me dat wat ik zelf vergeten ben. Dat wat ik wilde leren wilde lezen maar heb ontweken, want ik kreeg er buikpijn van. Ik wil niet zeiken, niet zeggen, niet neerleggen waar ik mee bezig ben. Want dan want dan wat dan waar kom ik dan niet bij jou. Niet bij jou, niet nu. Hier nu hier nu maar nu, leg je handen op mijn buik. Ik ruik aan je haren door het geruis van de buitenmensen heen. Wat ze zeggen versta ik niet maar ze praten hard, ze praten veel. Ik ben stil.
• 17
Raak
by Iris Mathilde van der Werff Raak je zachtjes met je vingers mijn gezicht aan? Raak me dan raak ik jou ook, maar ik durf niet eerst straks raakt het je hard. Ik weet ook dat ik ook jij ben. Jij die hard geraakt wordt. Jij die hard raakt. Ik blijf wel even wachten. Even blaken van warmte, trots en schaamte. Zolang er geen geraamte gezien wordt is het goed. Is het enkel een aanraking. Twee huiden. Twee huisjes. Vierkante meters lappen vlees. Daarbinnen is het donker. Alleen als het licht aan is, is het bloed rood.
18 •
A Matter Of Time by Eveline Mineur
Today her face was framed by clouds. Apart from the sky, the window behind her offered a view of the parking lot and some trees. He had immediately spotted her through the reinforced glass when the guard let him towards the visitors hall. She was sitting at one of the square little tables, looking at her hands in her lap. Now that he sat opposite of her, her eyes were leisurely searching his face for something new. Nothing really changes here, he wanted to say, but he kept silent; she didn’t like hearing stuff like that. By seeing her inside the walls that marked the boundaries of his world, suddenly he caught a glimpse of what it must be like for her. This morning she might have been walking in the
supermarket thinking of what to cook for dinner. And when she had decided, she had gotten in her car and started driving towards the smeared part of her life that was him. ‘So, how are you?’, she said finally. She had placed an arm across the line drawn on the table; he could feel one of the guards keeping his gaze fixed on them. ‘I’m good. It’s good to see you.’ Again, he’d forgotten. No matter how hard he tried to hold on to it, he always forgot the sound of her voice. She returned his quiet smile and nodded. It was coming to an end; slowly but surely they drifted into an empty sort of love, until that too would disappear and they would again be the strangers they were when they first met. When she stops asking, he thought, then I’ll know. The screeching of their chairs interrupted the soft murmuring at the other tables. Walking side by side towards the
Eveline Mineur • 19
guard that would take them to the room, he could feel her shame. The first couple of visits she had worn that shame with a sort of pride, a pride that had confused him as much as it had warmed him. Once inside the cell, they sat down on the bed which for roughly two hours would be theirs. While she took off her coat and folded it he could not help looking at the painting of the purple flower. There were several rooms, all practically the same, but this one was the only one with a painting next to the door. Maybe one of the guards had put it up there as a joke. She had taken off her thin sweater and now started to slowly unbutton his shirt. He took her face in his hands and forced himself to see her. The end of the afternoon was the worst time to meet; the sun was on this side of the building and painted a shadow play of bars on her bare freckled shoulders. Every time he longed for this moment for weeks, but as soon as they had entered the room, that
what had been building up in his body left him like a breath held too long. He leaned forward and kissed her, wondering who he would convince first, her or himself ? Then the room disappeared and his thoughts finally sank into her. She was lying in his arms when they heard a soft but determined knock on the door of the cell. They got up and slowly started to get back to their lives. Her mind was probably already with all the things waiting for her outside. He could not blame her though, he too would escape if that was possible. But that was exactly the point, wasn’t it? That he could not blame her, ever. He could not blame her distracted gaze, her nervous fidgeting, the things she said and didn’t say. He could not blame the cold touch of her fingers or the pity she tried to hide, both of which sent shivers down his spine. He couldn’t because everything she did, she did for him. Even if that was only making him
aware of the only thing that actually mattered enough to be missed. She did it even though she did not have to. No one asked her to come every month, to call him, to send some money once in a while so he could buy peanut butter or pay for the weekly costs of watching television. No one asked her to stay married to a man society had given up on. And yet she did.
Strength
20 โ ข
by Sushanth Shyamsundar
To think You are hidden by
waterfalls
A mask painted
holds your inner light
a faรงade of glass broken
down, feet tap to regain composure
Let
it
marching to Guqin and Yangqin - holding my breath.
out
Wings are meant to fly
not to incite thunder
Politely, PLEASE - turn in sky,
smile for baby.... 10000 years beat down
in empty streets
caverns collide with the marketplace
Hanging head feel her pulse
on your thigh
lightly, slowly, effortlessly
Sushanth Shyamsundar • 21
One, you are one, One dislikes two rests with six
respects three
plays with four
nurtures five
grows out his hair and dresses up as seven for Halloween wrestless with eight
drinks and gambles with nine begins and ends circle of life with zero
Who is one
when you are I hope
Burning man
one billion you
Lighted lady
Fiery child
strong? are free
: Force the one to become many
22 •
The Two Terrors: Depression and the Media A personal essay on media coverage of celebrity suicide By Julia Neugarten
I’m in bed. It’s February of 2015 and it’s the worst time of my life. The only logical solution appears to be giving upon life; I think I should probably die and I wonder why my body refuses to quit. Every inch of me aches with heaviness. I need to use the restroom, have needed to for a considerable stretch of time, but I can’t get my body to move there. I smell. Everything in my room smells. The curtains are drawn. I can’t sleep because Depression is shouting at me. I can’t die because I can’t move, but I can’t live because Depression is shouting at me. We’re all going to die. I hate to break it to you, but that’s the truth. I’m going to die. You’re going to die. Everyone you love is going to die. Even as we speak, someone you love might be dying and lots and lots of people you don’t know are definitely dying. That’s a fact. So, Depression screams in my ear: “Why not speed the process up a little? After all, if we’re just getting from A to B, A being birth and B being
death, there’s no point in delaying the inevitable. Right? In comes my mother with a glass of water and a slice of bread. I eat and drink. Not because I feel like it, not because it tastes like anything, but because I can’t be bothered to argue with her. Eating and drinking is the quickest way for me to get back to wallowing. I try not to think about how the eating and drinking means I’ll have to walk to the bathroom eventually, and how inconceivably impossibly hard that seems. I think about dying. Nothing drastic, no leaps from high buildings or slit wrists in the bathtub; just slipping out of existence. I don’t move. In a few hours my brother will come home from school and invite me to watch television with him. I’ll accept. It will make time pass. It will help me get from A to B more quickly. Time passes and I don’t kill myself. One day morphs into the next and I don’t kill myself. I take my medication and, even though it says on the leaflet that short-term sideeffects may include suicidal ideation, I don’t kill myself. I wait and wait and wait and I don’t kill myself. Then Dutch writer Joost Zwagerman kills himself. It’s on the news on the 8th of September. He was an intelligent, talented and educated man. Mercifully, it doesn’t say where he did it, or how. I desperately want to know these details,
Julia Neugarten • 23
Depression begs me to ask, but I don’t. I try not to Google, but end up Googling anyway. Google tells me Zwagerman had a wife and kids and a successful career. He had been suffering from major depressive disorder for many years. Unlike myself, he was old enough to place the agony of the present moment in perspective and to know that his moods went up and down over time. He had simply been unable to wait for the next upswing. Zwagerman had also led initiatives to raise awareness for mental illness. He had written extensively on the prevention of suicide, and the agony of outliving a loved one who has fallen victim to suicide. Yet, in September of that year, Depression became such torture that he couldn’t bear it for a second longer. And Zwagerman passed away. As David Foster Wallace wrote: “when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.” Humans have an instinct for survival. When we hear of someone’s death, we use reasoning, no matter how flawed, to protect ourselves from a similar fate. I tried thinking that Zwagerman’s situation had been completely different from my own, and therefore killing myself didn’t make anymore sense than it had before. But compared to Zwagerman’s intellect and success, what did I have? If anything, I had
more reasons to end it than he did. Reasoning couldn’t protect me from what Depression presented as fact: that life was meaningless, that Zwagerman knew it, that I knew it, and that there was only one way out.
24 • The Two Terrors: Depression and the Media
Just like that, even though I had slowly been climbing out, I was back in the depths of Depression. I shut the curtains and climbed back into bed. My eyes looked so hollow, my face so lifeless, that sometimes people recoiled when they looked straight at me. I had not cared personally for Zwagerman and it wasn’t grief, exactly, that I was experiencing. The death of Joost Zwagerman had given suicide a face for me, had made it into a tangible possibility. I had been strengthened in my belief that there was really no hope for me, no way out, no respite. There was only depression and desperation and unhappiness and suffering and, for the lucky few, there was numbness and nothingness. When I heard about Zwagerman’s suicide it made me want to die all over again. For me and many other people trying to climb out of Depression, hearing or reading about someone else’s suicide can be very upsetting. In some cases such news can be downright dangerous. Of course I understand that the press has a responsibility to inform the public. I also understand that it is becoming increasingly difficult to control information in the digital age. However, I think most people would agree with me that there is a gray area. Not reporting on a terrorist attack is bad journalism. Reporting on the exact way the attack was executed
and what procedure was used to put together the explosives is also bad journalism. We don’t want our newspaper to publish a how-to guide on explosives, because if “how to blow up an airport” was common knowledge it would most likely endanger a lot of people. I think “how to end your own life” wouldn’t be productive common knowledge either. I know this because, if a how-to guide on suicide had been available to me last year, I would have used it. Of course, making sure people know more about the symptoms and dangers of mental illnesses is vitally important to preventing, diagnosing and curing these diseases. I just think the media should cover this subject matter with consideration and care. I also think many media outlets aren’t capable of a lot of nuance, and should therefore shut up. Does that make me a bit of a snob? Sure. But why shouldn’t I be critical of the endless stream of (mis)information that’s being shoved in my face by the media? The de-stigmatization of mental illnesses is an equally important step towards the recovery of individuals. I think people we idolize should speak up about their illnesses. I greatly admire celebrities like Jared Padalecki, Kristen Bell and Stephen Fry for doing so. Padalecki, especially, came out of the mental-illness closet at a time when I was desperately
Julia Neugarten • 25
looking for role models, and his bravery continues to amaze me till this day. When I was suffering the worst of my depression, knowing that people I admired were going through the same thing was a huge source of comfort. But letting people know that so-and-so whom they absolutely adored just killed themselves is a bad idea. Going into the details of someone’s suicide is downright dangerous. Maybe if all media coverage of suicides was nuanced, maybe if stories of people recovering from mental illness also made it into the paper occasionally, maybe if depressed people weren’t already amongst the most vulnerable in our society, we could simply write about someone’s death and mention, as an aside, that it was the result of a suicide. Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world, and media coverage of suicide is a danger to many people. Let me end this story on a positive note. Let me show you the kind of media coverage of mental illness that the world needs more of. I wanted to kill myself last year. I wanted to die. The next best thing was sleeping, so I did a lot of that in 2015. But I didn’t kill myself. I held on. Because even though I could not feel that people loved me anymore, I could, after a while, consider that my perspective perhaps wasn’t the only one. Maybe if people kept insisting they valued me, it wasn’t
some kind of elaborate sham. Maybe no one was lying to me but Depression, that black mass that took the shape of all those voices shouting in my head. If those voices were the deceitful ones, then maybe I really was ill. Unbearably ill, and ill in a manner that I never could have imagined but also ill in a way that could be cured. And it was cured. I’m not ill anymore. I’m healthy. When someone tells me they love me or they’re happy to have me as a friend or they think I did a great job on this or that, I believe them. I have never been prouder of myself than I am for this; for recovering from depression. Very, very slowly, I began to unveil the parts of my life that could pierce the outer shell of desperation. I rediscovered my creativity as an emotional outlet. I found out how much I care for animals, and how they always succeed in brightening my day. I became compassionate. I no longer held myself to impossible standards. I suddenly understood that reading and learning have an intrinsic value. The pursuit of knowledge is more than a way to excel, to stand out from the crowd. What others think of you is utterly unimportant in the face of how you feel about yourself. Now I have my health back. People ask me, sometimes, if I’m afraid. A relapse into depression is a possibility. But I think I have shielded myself, in a sense, from the absolute
26 •The Two Terrors: Depression and the Media
despair. I’ve dropped the pretense of perfection and accepted the reality of who I am; not perfect, but human. This is what recovery is: it is to accept that you are human, rather than perfect. A person with a balanced mental health allows themselves, sometimes, to be sad or angry without feeling guilt over it, the same way that a mentally healthy person allows themselves uncomplicated joy. Maybe we should all embrace the reality of our daily lives, look at the people we are rather than the people we want to be. That is the only way we can ever experience uncomplicated joy: by accepting that it goes hand in hand with uncomplicated sadness. Choose the less terrible of the terrors: please, choose to live.
• 27
Instructies Voor Het Wachten by Joep Harmsen
Stel, u bent te vroeg of – nog erger – de ander of het vervoersmiddel in kwestie is te laat; gedwongen door omstandigheden zult u deze tijd moeten overbruggen, zo werkt het leven (tenminste, in onze driedimensionale ruimte-tijdbeleving). De meest grove fout die u dan kunt maken is deze tijd nuttig besteden. Nut is een illusie, bedacht door de CIA en de Kerstman om de mensheid in te lijven in hun androïde zombieleger van horige zaagselhoofden vanuit hun commandocentrum op de Noordpool. Afijn, doet er ook niet toe. Weg ermee. Gebruik deze tijd dus niet om uw nieuwsachterstand in te halen door de Metro open te slaan of om eindelijk eens uw moeder te bellen. Laat sowieso uw smartphone met rust – hoewel u hier ook zeker zeer niet nuttige dingen mee kunt doen – dit leidt alleen maar af van de werkelijkheid: u wacht. Omarm het wachten. Letterlijk. Pak de dichtstbijzijnde persoon vast enomarm haar/hem met beide armen. Fluister in haar/zijn oor: Ik heb op u gewacht. Of – als je haar/hem al beter kent: Ik heb op je gewacht, lieveheersbeestje. Sluit je ogen. Desbetreffend persoon zou zich misschien proberen los te worstelen. Laat dit niet toe. Fluister tot slot: De tijd van wachten is voorbij. En controleer of zij/hij nog ademhaalt.
28 •
Bramen Plukken by Erwin Hurenkamp
en als ik zo doorga roep ik straks een leger paarse potjes op me af. Een leger kleurlingen om mee te nemen naar verjaardagen die nooit toereikend zijn in aantal zodat er overschiet en ik jou vraag langs te komen. Hun vormen bootsen wolken na, het donkere sap als vingerverf. Om ze te pakken reik ik door de stelen aaneengeregen kattenklauwtjes en als hun nekjes bij de hechting breken vermengt hun lauwwarme geur zich met kamille en de dampen van gestaag uitwasemend gras. De zon is een oven
Je ziet het bloed in mijn kleine wondjes stollen met genotzucht in je ogen, die wellust in je blik – je likt de wonden (wat ik wel niet doe om bij je in de buurt te komen) Er is al niets meer over van de Grote Jongen die telkens weer blijmoedig de wallen onder je ogen optilt, je blik met een koevoet openbreekt je bramen voert.
Erwin Hurenkamp • 29
Ik vind de vervanging voor mijn verlangen in het loom sluiten van je ogen, de zinnelijke lijnen om je mond die zich naar de vruchten vormen en het paarse sap dat opspeelt je lippen stift in de kleur van de bloeddorst waarmee je de tekens van mijn liefde verslindt Hoe jij alles opeet, binnenhoudt, uitzweet (En ik droom als je weg bent dat ik je borst verf met het sap, de spanning uit je spieren kneed en dat ik bot vang want deze kramp kan alleen elektrisch worden behandeld, jouw verzet breekt pas op het nulpunt van de horizon, voorbij de lage uitlopers van zijn licht. Pas als ik alle lagen van je lichaam heb gepeld, je met krammen vastzet aan het bed, de spijlen, het matras Jij klein morbide monster)
30 •
Jason
by Jack Caulfield
Jason in the next bed over has no arm, or you know, one arm left, no arm where one of them should be, is what I mean to say. I won’t go into what I have that confines me to the bed beside Jason’s in a similar convalescence, but it’s two arms, no more no less, so don’t think this is a place for treating armlessness only, or whatever you want to call what Jason has. I’ve nothing similar. Anyway, I hate him. I’m sorry, the story is about Jason and my personal feelings shouldn’t colour it. Jason used to have an arm where he hasn’t now, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he’s acclimatised. To be precise I should say that what he lacks is the forearm, the part down to the elbow (is it an elbow if nothing hinges on it?) being intact. The thing ends in a stump, a mess of bandages. Yet the remaining arm alone amounts to enough from my scrawny perspective, musculature-wise I mean, to place him way above me on the food chain. It was, so I
heard, some kind of sporting accident. Not that I expect him to have lost the arm during the accident itself – I can think of few sports that would tear your arm clean off (though maybe getting an arm stuck in a cliff-face he was climbing, hacking it off himself without anaesthetic, yes that would nicely suit the grit and heroism of the cunt). No, I think the accident rather mangled the arm beyond repair and forced an amputation after the fact. I haven’t asked him the specifics. I am only in here with him because they are running out of space, shoving unrelated problems under the same headings, into the same wards. Calling myself a problem is not inappropriate. I think they resent having me here. Next to him, how could they not? As I said, Jason has adjusted to armlessness with ease, meeting his injury much better than I have met my own. In fact, he makes the whole situation seem trivial. I’ve never seen him anything besides upbeat. The nurses who come to attend to his wound first thing in the morning, men and women both, reserve unforced smiles and coquettish giggles for him that the other patients never see. That I never see, at least – it is only me and Jason in here. I wish it was anyone else. No, when they (nurses, doctors, concerned visitors) see me, I reckon something in their faces falls. They put
Jack Caulfield • 31
on kindly smiles, sometimes, especially the visitors, but it is never unstrained. They had hoped it would be better by now. My interminable convalescence, a disappointment to all comers, and I can’t help but pick up on it. Thankfully I don’t need the constant care that Jason does, and I try to be as self-sufficient as I can under the circumstances. But there are bad days when I have to talk to someone besides Jason, however unsympathetic. I can read in their faces, they try their hardest to be sad for me, but next to such a brave, model patient it is hard to respect the cringing, whining –This isn’t some catalogue of woes. Back to Jason – when I speak to him it usually goes something like this (Jason the initiator, naturally): ‘How’s it going today, pal? Things looking up?’ I grunt something deliberately unintelligible to stop the conversation in its tracks. Doesn’t work. He chuckles. For his age, his voice is deep, authoritative; aside from the faint (and deadly irritating, I am beginning to find) American accent, a good-natured laugh like his could have come from my father, anyone’s father. Yet he is no older than me. ‘Don’t give me tha-a-at.’ His voice drags out the last syllable, a sickly-sweet ingratiation. ‘I’m fine.’ I’m not.
‘You’re not.’He’s right. ‘You’re right.’ ‘So-o-o...’ (that ingratiation again) ‘do you want to talk about it, pal?’ ‘No.’
32 • Jason
I had intended to transcribe much more than this, but it wouldn’t get anything across to you that hasn’t already come across. Probably nothing of the grating quality of the man has come through – you aren’t here. You don’t have to live with the guy. It’s a subtle thing, I suppose, and hard to put down on paper. You’re probably thinking, the man has done nothing wrong, and more than that, has been actively pleasant and accommodating. It’s true that the last patient to occupy Jason’s bed wasn’t nearly so warm, that this kind of conversation would have fizzled out on his end as I tried, with Jason, to make it fizzle out on mine –that this could inspire a kind of bitterness too. But it’s a different bitterness, a palatable bitterness compared to what rises up in my throat when Jason speaks. They brought in food earlier, some mush I cannot identify, and a coffee each, and this always raises the expectation of conversation. ‘Hospital food, eh?’ he says, but with such self-aware irony I cannot fault him, even privately, on the cliché. He winks, looking in my direction. I do not know how I am supposed to respond but would like to make the good-faith attempt, for once.
‘Yeah it’s uh,’ I say weakly, trailing off mid-sentence without having ever really intended to continue. I am hoping he will transform the raw stuff of automatic small talk into something more engaging. Instead he spoons something into his mouth and makes a deliberate, theatrical grimace. This is supposed to amuse me, and in fairness, probably would, were it coming from someone with whom my intimacy was genuine, unforced. Absent any better ideas I mimic his action. It comes off as weird, something in either my too-real, unnerving grimace, or in the fact of having mimicked him at all. Jason doesn’t say anything, or object, but his smile falters which tells me all I need to know. I decide not to humour him anymore. Of course, the idea that I am the one humouring him seems pretty laughable now that it’s written down. I suppose that is the heart of it; I hate Jason, but only hypocritically. Only insofar as what I loathe in myself is revealed by the comparison. This weirdness, awkwardness, that arises in even good-faith attempts at engaging him: it’s all on me. I drink my coffee, which is too hot, and savour the burning which distracts from this depressing mode of thinking. A real grimace, now. Jason has turned away for the moment. I savour the bitter taste.
Jack Caulfield • 33
Sorry, sorry. So a conversation between Jason and the nurses goes something like this – I hear about two thirds of it, Jason’s voice has that booming quality I can’t avoid hearing, while the nurses are usually quieter, cooing at him in reply. ‘How is it today with our Jason, then?’ she asks, bubbling, giddily excited to arrive at what must be the highlight of her rounds. Or, half the room is a highlight. I’m the other half. ‘Oh, you know. Mostly armless.’ He makes this joke with all of them, at least once. They always laugh. I seethe. ‘Oh Jason, you are a good one.’ She says this putting her hand on his intact arm (the left, the one furthest from me) and blushing and laughing. This one is in her forties, heavyset, married judging by the ring on her finger, and with a broad northern accent that bothers me. Jason treats her the same as all the rest, the single young women and men who laugh and blush and lean over him and touch his bicep just like this one does. He treats everyone the same. That’s the problem. ‘Only because of you, my dear,’ he says, squeezing her arm in return. She blushes a deeper crimson. ‘Jason!’ She whispers something in his ear that I can’t hear, and then, ‘let’s get that wound dressed.’ ‘Let’s,’ he responds, with a grin.
At this point I’m wrapping the pillow around my head to block out the sound, and staring at the wall on my right, my back to the pair of them. I imagine them watching me and sighing, except that Jason wouldn’t sigh, wouldn’t be even remotely annoyed. He would find a way to sympathise. I can hear his voice in my head now, buddy, do you want to talk about it? To be so accepting of insult and injury, so passive – you’d have to be insincere or braindead. But the worst of it is he’s neither. The nurse eventually comes over and I let the pillow rest and stare up at her with bloodshot eyes from too little sleep. I don’t say anything. ‘Surly again?’ she says. She is not among the number of nurses that makes any special effort to accommodate me. I prefer the honest disdain. ‘Hrm.’ ‘Don’t be difficult,’ she says as if to a child. ‘You know, you’re lucky to have a neighbour who puts up with your sulking.’ She beams over at Jason, who is too gracious to respond. ‘Hrm,’ I repeat. Her expression hardens. ‘You’re lucky to be alive, young man. You ought to be more grateful.’
34 • Jason
‘I disagree,’I mutter, and wrap the pillow around my head and face the wall again, to dodge the indignant response. She is still trying, stoically, to engage me, but my thoughts are elsewhere, on the things I haven’t told you. The years before Jason, or the evening I tried my best to drown. After a time, she gives up and goes away. I should explain. Fuck Jason, this isn’t about Jason. There was a time when I used to try, when things hadn’t yet got to this point. I could tell you the typical story, of being fired from the job and dumped by the girl at the same time, and it is true, but to tell it honestly I think I was angling for catastrophe, I think I wanted an excuse to lapse. As for where that desire came from, who knows? Some innate, ancestral inadequacy, maybe, some feeling that my relative portion of success couldn’t persist. I missed work for no reason, did not break things off with the girl but withdrew to the point where it was all she could do to end it officially. I think maybe I broke her heart. These days it’s hard for me to believe I could have ever held down a job, or worse, been loved by someone. It is everything I have drowned in myself, everything I want back.
Jack Caulfield • 35
So once I no longer had the work or the relationship to worry about, the great project of lethargy began. Initially I fooled myself into believing that I was enjoying the time off from work and people, that a well-earned rest was all that this was. I stopped cleaning the dishes, washing my clothes, caring for the plants. The plants, an interesting note, variously stopped growing or grew out of control into monstrous shapes against the windows, an encroaching darkness. Nothing too melodramatic, I didn’t board up the windows, I sometimes even answered the phone, shaved, left the house, but to be truthful it is easier than you would expect to fall off the map. All it takes is a good enough show of not caring, and the calls and the knocks on the door for the most part dwindle to nothing. So the rooms of the flat became a little darker during the day as the plants blocked the windows, and I felt badly about the gathering dust, and I almost never woke up before midday, but it took something greater to solidify the situation for me. When I walked into the kitchen to find a colony of ants living there, this was the sign. It was as if the house had decided to turn its despair, my lethargy, into a physical symptom. It was the abject irrupting into the real. I don’t
posit any causal link between my slothfulness and the infestation, but it was a point of departure. A synchronicity. I stared a few moments, unable to formulate a reaction, and then went out the front door and slammed it shut, leaving my keys inside among the ants. It is difficult for me to describe my feelings; I felt at the time that they had gone with this sudden incursion, beyond the bounds of what could be described. I walked with heavy, uneven steps down the corridor outside in a sort of psychosis, making my face grotesque, sticking my tongue out at nothing. There was nobody there, and the doors to the other flats were all closed. I went properly outside and could think of nothing better than to plunge into the nearest canal, which I did. Not wearing heavy clothes, I struggled to sink. It must have been an absurd sight, my attempt to reach the bottom of the (not very deep) canal and remain there. After the third time I was returned against my will to the surface, it became clear to me that I had not thought this through. Nonetheless I persisted for I don’t know how long, until I passed out. I suppose the dead weight of unconsciousness would have dragged me down had some do-gooder, some anonymous Jason before I knew who Jason was, not dived in and returned me to safety.
36 • Jason
So that’s about the long and short of it. It’s harder than you’d think to properly drown. I’m looking at him, Jason, with a special bitterness now. It’s night; he’s sleeping. I woke just now from unpleasant dreams, not any one dream but several that formed a sort of swirling continuum throughout which Jason was ever-present. Now there he is sleeping peaceful as a child. I wonder what he dreams about, what does someone dream about who is so untouchable? I envision what might be going on in his head: a bland recounting of the day’s news – a series of typically effortless conversations – an enjoyable sporting event, watched or participated in. I can see no secrets, no perversions beneath his untroubled brow. I want to fucking kill him. ‘Jason,’ I say, loudly enough to wake him. ‘Jason.’ He wakes up. Even this he does gracefully. ‘Yeah, bud?’ he says, almost instantly alert, attentive. ‘You populate my nightmares.’ He blinks, the first time I’ve seen him perturbed, though not too much. ‘What do you mean?’ he says carefully. ‘You’re always there, in every dream. You’re taking over my mind.’ ‘You’re clearly agitated, my friend. You’ll feel better
once the dream fades. Give it a moment, we’ll talk it out.’ I say: ‘I don’t think so, no. I don’t think this is going to fade, Jason.’ Slowly he says: ‘O-o-oka-a-ay.’ ‘You’re in everything. You don’t understand. The plants grow into your shape and your face is at the windows and the ants, they all have your face, and when I look in the mirror I have your face, you are the passers-by in the street, and the water pulling me down and at the same time the stranger pulling me to safety, you are going to rip me in two and –’ ’Whoa whoa whoa, slow down, it’s okay, it’s okay. This sounds like a lot of different –’ ‘It’s not okay. You don’t understand,’ I say again. ‘You might be right about that,’ he says, with an unbearably self-mocking smile, ‘so slow down. What was the dream this time, tonight?’ ‘I am begging you,’ I say, and I mean both in the dream and in the present. ‘I do not know what for but I am begging you to just, to just.’ I pause for a long moment. Jason says nothing, his eyes broadcasting concern. The thing I want to say goes something like this in my head: ‘If you’re in the world I can’t be. There’s no place for me when someone like you exists.’
Jack Caulfield • 37
What I end up saying instead is, ‘You need to be cut out. I want you dead, Jason. I need you dead.’ And the sight is so pitiful, so muted, that he shows nothing of fear, resentment, even confusion. His brow creases with sympathy. He wants to help me. I think of deepening the insult, suddenly, telling him in more colourful words the depth of the loathing, You’re a cancer, worse, you’re the plague, you’re but – I could spit in his face, and nothing would come of it. No retaliation, no surprise, no nothing. He wants to help. He says as much. ‘I... I think you need to talk to someone about this, man. I’d offer, but I think circumstances maybe... preclude my helpfulness to you, no?’ While he talks I am pulling the covers off and moving first to a sitting position then getting to my feet. I do not reply but walk the distance to his bed. I stand over him in what I hope is a menacing pose. He looks up at me, his expression unreadable, his arm conspicuously absent as if to say you wouldn’t hurt a man in my condition, would you? Would you? I would. I would. I will. The mantra echoes in my skull. I will. I will. I say very quietly, ‘Thank you for trying to help me, Jason. I think I am a helpless case.’
38 • Jason
It feels like a small death, and I go back to bed. Jason is absent now. I am (finally) alone. They took him away. Somewhere else in the hospital, I guess. A couple of days after that night, and who can blame them. I wish I could gloat over his retreat, but I expect he didn’t ask for it. Maybe, he felt obliged to at least tell them the story. And they can’t have golden boy in with a lunatic now, can they. Net result is I’m still here, without a roommate, which suits me fine. And the doctor, the one who tries to talk to me about my issues, comes more often. I still have a sort of childish glee in giving him absolutely nothing, which is something to fill the days. To tell the truth though, after the incident and with Jason’s absence, I’ve become restless here. What an embarrassment; softening at the decisive moment, neither able to stop hating nor to properly justify the hate, so as not to be embarrassed by it. It’s easier now that he’s gone. I can say he’s a bastard and he just is one, he doesn’t get to grin as if to say Well I suppose I am, in my own charming way. Or worse, apologise, try to get better. When he’s not here I can build up a solid portrait including every little wrong he’s ever done me, and there’s no risk of him shattering it with something,
well, equally hateful but harder to define as such. To tell the truth, again; I am itching to be out of this place now, and nothing is stopping me. Certainly they would like me to leave at this point, they sense the hopelessness of fixing me as well as anyone, and I may as well be out of their hair. It’s been some time since I had any friends or family come to visit, and I expect they’ll feel obliged to, once they hear about the little incident. I would rather dodge that unpleasantness. The door stands open and I am staring more and more not at the wall but at the corridor outside. Not that there’s anything there, but – there is the promise of being out of this place. Out of this misery, into a different misery perhaps, I am not so blinkered, but – but I have had enough of rooms and being in them. Rooms with Jason and rooms alone. I suppose I’ve been in here long enough to forget what there is to be afraid of out there. So now, tentatively – I get unsteadily to my feet. I put on my boots. It’s raining outside, but that almost makes it better. Walking to Jason’s now-empty bed, I pull off the bedding, pillows and all, and dump it in a heap on the floor. I look down at the bare mattress, trying to imagine I can still see the imprint from where he lay, ending abruptly at the elbow (elbow?) of the right arm. I take aim at where his head must
Jack Caulfield • 39
lllustrations have rested and spit in the phantom of Jason’s stupid worthless face and walk out the door. There is nobody in the corridor, and I grin. Wearing my green hospital gown and excited with the prospect of muddying my boots, I make my way with uneven steps to the nearest fire exit, sticking my tongue out at nothing all the way.
Kat Lybanieva: cover, p. 4, p. 5, p. 7, p. 31, p. 34, p. 37 Anna Sbitneva: p. 2, p. 10 Zep de Bruyn: p. 13 Ties Wijker: p. 15, back Chino Ayala: p. 16, p. 17, p. 18 Iris Mathilde van der Werff: p. 23, p. 26, p. 27, p. 39 Layout by Kat Lybanieva The confused murmering inside this issue reminded us of a tower in a far away country: a beehive buzzing with voices, all in different tongues. To contribute to our attempt to capture the LCA hodgepodge of languages and cultures, send your submission (text or image) for our next issue ‘Found in Translation’ to: redactie.heroine@gmail.com with subject ‘Copy Found in Translation’. Short texts are allowed in the original language, either provide an English translation, or assist us in translating.