A Volume of Fiction

Well, well, well🤔

If it isn’t the power of a positive outlook. Although it helps if there actually are positive things to look out upon.

Yeah, sure, okay, the hotel wasn’t great. Sue me. But hey looking on that positive side, we’d snored through another night. The three of us had all gotten a bed to sleep in and so what did we honestly have to complain about?

(Don’t actually sue me by the way.)

A slow, damp beginning to the day can put a dent in your mood, but if you manage to find something to look forward to, maybe you can smooth out that dent or even dent it the other way. Like, in a positive direction.

There was something for us, my brother and me most specifically, but for mother also, to look forward to.

We left it behind us. We had somewhere else to go first.

Blue meets Blue meets Blue (A Poem)

Before me the grey of the pebble-beach water turns into blue. It meets the countless boats lazily floating about and, there, becomes azure.

From beyond the boats the color-changing waves carry millions of specks of light across the lake. They leave their glimmers of sunlight behind on the beach, just in front of my feet, and rhythmically move back to get some more.

Far in the distance and beyond the lake as if guarding it, mountains. They’re all blue. The closest ones are the darkest. The further ones, lighter. The furthest, lightest. And following the shape of the mountain’s edges is the endlessly light and blue sky.

I feel warm here.

This is the place where blue meets blue meets blue.

It’s just... heavenly😇

To go to sleep, and then, better yet, to wake up Rrrrested. You know what I mean? That amazing feeling; a power coursing through you signalling you’re ready for the day.

There might’ve been a little something special in my pillow to aid in sleeping. For one, it was bigger than the biggest pillow I had ever seen. For another, drugs. But although I probably just imagined those, I was in fact ready for what was to come.

We went to Zürich, and I’ll be pooped if it wasn’t a beautiful day.

I perched down at the edge of a lake and wrote a poem of sorts about the striking, sunlit view. Doing so helped me relax. (I’ll share the poem in the next post here on Instagram.)

But the thing about Switzerland?

It comes at a cost.

“Hello-hello-hello,” burbled the baby.

It was in a pram, turned towards the fish store/restaurant’s entrance. There was no door, just a number of glass partitions that could be opened, of which one was indeed.

“Hello-hello-hello,” came again. The words were probably not addressing me; I was eating kibbling some distance behind the pram, just chewing and listening.

“Ladle-ladle-ladle.”

The baby was varying things up, practising its palette, perhaps. Not bad, little humanfolk, you know two words already.

“Braille.”

Huh.

That was an impressive third word for a baby. And it didn’t sound like a blind baby so it probably didn’t have braille in its life yet either. Still this small thing had uttered the word with singular confidence. A confidence I could learn something from.

That baby has a bright future ahead of it.

Wanna guess where this was?

Here’s a hint: I’m Dutch. Which means I, having lived in Holland and the adjoined provinces all my life, having travelled relatively little, may have never seen mountains before this moment.

(My country is known for being ‘down to Earth’ in more ways than one.)

‘This moment’ was during a road trip with my mother and brother, driving through the mountains. And boy they were a sight. They stretched my mind into a new understanding for words such as ‘big’, ‘massive’, and ‘mountainous’.

The question then of course becomes: ‘what did we find on the other side of the mountains?’

And the answer is, summer; and poetry-inspiring beauty.

How shaving cream almost killed my dream-self.

So I dreamt that I was cleaning. And getting angry about it.

Sometimes when I’m angry at a thing I have in my hands, I drop it, out of spite, because I am immature and in such moments think that might have some kind of effect.

It did.

(While for some unholy reason ’s ‘The Lambulance’ was playing in the background.)

When I got to my canister of shaving cream I was completely emotionally done with cleaning. I shocked into anger and took it to my first floor window.

(This picture is the closest to a reproduction I can make living on the 6th floor now.)

I held it in my fist and raised it outside. “Good riddance,” I thought, unclenching my fingers. The thing fell out of sight.

But then I recalled that items with compressed air or similar-potentially-explosive-when-compressed substances may explode upon being dropped.

I looked down, just in time to see the canister hit the ground. Shaving cream spouted out of it and the thing took off like a rocket. Coming straight for my nose.

My anger was replaced by alertness and I pulled my head back, barely dodging it. It shot by, still miraculously straight, so I thought, “I should have caught it. That would have been awesome and practical.”

Again I decided to check outside, to see if the unintentional rocket had landed on the roof. It hadn’t. What it did do was fall down, again perfectly straight, and this time I was ready for it. I caught it in a swift motion.

While turning the canister around, I mouthed to myself, “I’m so cool,” or something like that while a jet of shaving cream shot through my half-parted lips into my throat, gaining oxygen and mass and lodging itself stuck.

“This it not good,” I then thought. It was blocking my breathing.

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This is part of my Daily Live story collection that I’m publishing on my blog. The full story is called ‘Choking on Reflected Anger: A Dream’. Go to the website to find out the answer to such question as: Did I survive the ordeal?

What can I say?

Sometimes even after a you don’t feel like yourself. Going on vacation with my mother and brother had ceased to be fun only; I felt an uneasy irritation coming up in waves.

Not storm clouds on the horizon, rather it was a silvery weather with cloud lining.
I guess I wasn’t really used to being with people so constantly for so long. Being unwilling to admit to this, my expressing the irritation went a little coarsely.
And this was only Day #3 on our vacation depicted in ‘A Place to Get Lost Towards’.

It’s the last thing you would expect.

You go to Maastricht, and all is parties and fine. (‘You’ being ‘me and my family’ in this case.) It is nice open café terrace area, hedged in between big old classy stone buildings of all classy colours. Grey, mostly. But some faded, reddish flashes hither and thither.

Then in front of one such building, a statue, but one different than the others we see. This one moves in the breeze; arms undulating like limbs of a tree, inviting. A collection basked with some money in front of her. A smile plastered on her face.

Bet.

So we go up to her, and she then holds out her hand, which my brother, gentleman that he is, takes. (Without kissing it; that would have rendered his lips all grey from her statue skin.) Upon which she clasps his hand with her other one and Stops Living.

Just like that, my brother was stuck. Hostage to the moment.

So what did we do? We went to avolumeoffiction dot com to read how A Place to Get Lost Towards continues. (‘We’ being ‘you’, hopefully, in this case. See you there? 🫣)

“Let’s race for a book.”

That’s my buddy speaking, we’re out karting. Having just finished a first heat, we are drinking in the ‘roadside bar’ or something equally-fast-sounding. Apparently I’d driven with my lips half-parted; now a cold glass of cola alleviates the arid feel in my mouth.

Big windows beside the fire-red booths show the track. I grin at his suggestion. Upping the stakes is something we do when playing games against each other. For books I go hard, though.

We open the doors to the tracks again, stepping into the cold as if we’d walked right outside.

Dressed up for the race, everyone gets in their karts. I sit behind my buddy again, aiming to chase him better this time. The motors get revved up, and he’s off, and I’m off, chasing. He’s fast again, but this time I know the par for the course – the incessant burr of the engine, the bursting air, the screaming rubber; I keep up.

He hadn’t been the first on the track, so has to pipe down behind a slower racer, and then I slow down behind him. Having gotten a bit of a feel for the racing thing, and having asked my pal how he would go about overtaking people, I soon spot a chance.

There’s a right corner coming up, and I see that both drivers before me have to take it wide because of the line they’re going. My friend is planning to overtake the guy on the right, as the guy has been making wide turns, slowing into them too tight, leaving space on his starboard when coming out of the corner – a chance of overtaking. This time the guy doesn’t, and my friend has to slow down or crash into him.

I veer right earlier, and when the first driver leaves space between him and the side-rail, I make the turn tightly and…

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What happens next? Who wins the coveted book? You could probably guess it—but that would ruin the suspense, so perhaps it’s best to just continue reading ‘Too Fast But Not Fast Enough’ on the blog! (Link in bio.) Cheers!

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This was bound to become a problem.

While mother had experienced the joys of stress prior to prior family outings, it had been of a different kind.

This year it spread from her to all of us, and amalgamating through our interactions into a seven-colored hydra of unfinished chores and unpacked items and newfound fears of losing control and of what all might happen as result. After doing one chore, or quelling one fear, two new ones took its place.

The revolving tides of happenstance inherent in such a non-form road trip couldn’t be overcome. After a valiant struggle we could only let them take us.

Having dropped our two cats off at a temporary shelter surrounded by a great, stunning hedge, we hit the road late, encountering a problem.

The idea of ‘just going somewhere’ sounded nice on the soundboard but turned out to be impractical. For, really, how could we, human beings bound to the compulsions of our subconscious, become agents of chaos?

(Continues in ‘A Place to Get Lost Towards’ – full travel book coming out soon! I hope! I’m procrastinating! But I’ll stop doing so later! Bye!)

I can’t escape it any longer.

(Believe me, I’ve tried. But I have to face the truth)—I should probably clean my room.

Because the space I live in is way full. (Well, technically, the space I live in is empty except for me, as space can only be used so long as it’s not already in use.) Much of my room is now filled, with useful elements—where I can no longer exist.

My chamber used to be huge. I still remember entering it excitedly for the first time, not long before moving. The description ‘spacious’ would have been well-suited, especially compared to the bedroom I was moving from. Over the last five years I have used this room well, more and more. Correspondingly, over the years, I possessed less and less room. A single swivel on one of the two desk chairs beside my bed reveals how viciously much there is and there is to do.

(Picture a description of an overwhelming manifold of things here, for this is merely an excerpt from my essay ‘Ebb and Air, in _____’. True, it is a messy essay. But then, messy is my room, and so, thus, the writing reflects.)

Do you ever feel like there’s so much, just so, darn, syrup sucking much… stuff. In your room? that even attempting to clean it would drive you mad, mad with a crazy rage? That’s me when I contemplate my living area. Which I therefore don’t do, as often as I can avoid it.

But I felt I had to clear some room in my mind and write about it. To maybe also gain an idea for how to move forward with all of it. Which I sort of did.

Let me know down below – do you dislike syrup? And perhaps more applicably, does this room / mental state feel relatable to you?

(P.s., btw, this pic probably doesn't look too overly cluttered, but my room has cleaned up quite a bit since writing this essay in 2021. And I do attribute part of that improvement to the realisation I share in this essay. Whoop!)

Well… it didn’t go entirely as unplanned.

We ran into some troubles on the road to nowhere – but we found a solution. As you do, being a family on vacation.

This is another part of the introduction to A Place to Get Lost Towards, from my travel book ‘The Place, Over All’. Check out more of the story on my website, via the link in my bio!

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I shouldn’t have come here.

It’s too loud, talking, yelling, music.

Well the music is nice, actually. What of it I can hear from between the screams of kids emanating from the play area. This kind of fast food is unhealthy, though, and expensive for just one single meal. But I’d just… felt like it. Is that a bad thing?

A smaller table next to the window, overlooking the arse-end of the metro station, empties; I switch to it – sitting by myself at a table for six felt awkward. At this table, it feels only 2/3rd as awkward.

There is a small gull on the curved plastic roof of the station outside; it’s gorging on a fry, th*****ng it down. Why nature, you elegant thing. Cars in the second lane behind it are coming my direction from the right, overtaking their reflections in the wide red building’s windows.

Cars from the left, from behind me, are slowing to an equanimous halt. Someone in the distance, just after the train bridge, is crossing the road. Multiple someones, judging by the line of cars. I can’t see it from here, but I know – I can see it in my memories.

Adolescents across the street are going back to classes in that building opposite the restaurant. Some of them might have just had lunch here.

Hm?

I can hear the music again. Most kids have gone; the ones remaining seem to be eating. Hard to scream and eat something tasty at the same time. The place seems almost empty after lunchtime. It’s calmer.

Maybe this isn’t so bad once in a while.