Floris Serruys - Just Words

this story contains sensitive content in the form of the loss of someone dear. Also a mild form of substance abuse.

Just Words.

The grass underneath the pine trees is soft and green, just like our joyful smoky minds, and white terns were dancing while the piece of world supporting our idle bottoms swiveled away from our own central star to face the other stars of the galaxy.

We sing Moonlight Drive. Arty knows the words. Arty feels the words of our smiling duet that goes on and on for hours and laughter is by far the most beautiful expression of human emotion. Frizzy, the same Frizzy that earlier climbed one of the pine trees smiling and shouting with his seductive eastern European accent “if the cop shows up I’m not here I’m a bird” clearly visible only two meters off the ground dangling on the first branch, this Frizzy also feels the words, his words, his own words, his own Bosnian Balkan words he sings with the most honest true-hearted Bosnian voice wishing we could understand them all. This worry swiftly fades in the next line of his Balkan verse realizing he is singing in a language we all understand very well. And as the lines get carried through the island by the warm winds of our pushbikes, we sing our way through the subtropical rainforest guided by the Milky Way that’s shining bright above our heads perfectly parallel with our pathway the lagoon road.

The bowling club is called the bowlo and is a place where people gather to have a good time, or to get wasted and make people believe they are having a good time, but whatever way, where people are always feelin’ good. It is one of the older buildings on the island, with some character for a change. Standing on the empty balcony with its cast iron curly railings under the starry sky you see silhouettes of the mountains in the south, tall and precious, dark and fearless, inviolable and sacredly guarded by the southern cross. Lookin’ down you see the perfectly flat vacant lawn where during the day balls leave gentle hands to roll curved towards their goal where they will slow down and drop down and stop, exhausted, to rest forever. It is on this balcony that Arty and me are sharing words, and because you are all the beautiful people you meet I am happy to be talking with Arty. He knows that my words, my foreign English words will never be able to express my full internal self and understandings, not because they are foreign but because they are just words, words however we love to speak ‘cause this is a conversation, an exchange of wisdom by which you scrape and dig into the rocky top of your internal mountain of knowledge, find diamonds of wisdom that were created by the time and by being and by the patience of memories’ floatation in the mind and reveal them leisurely, not directly visible to the naked eye nor absorbable into the electronic mind, but carefully wrapped into a piece of oral expression through words most dictionaries describe but don’t understand making the mountain rise.

Too much booze makes me forget exact lines of conversation, though melts everything together in one memorable memory. A memory that no matter what makes me grow and grow even more if it is a mindbroadening one. Last night’s memory belongs to the second kind, makin’ me feel extra good today, understanding that I will never understand it all in this life, no need to…

Why human beings always want to hold on to things is a strange natural phenomenon. It is useless because everything is dynamic, everchanging and temporary, if it already existed in the first place. It is a weakness my mind cannot yet deal with, as I am keeping these words captured on a piece of paper instead of letting them flow away freely. Especially when knowing that words will always be just words. If words weren’t just words Dali could have stuck to his poetry. But then again paintings are just paintings, ideas just ideas and imaginations just imaginations, I’m happy they didn’t but WHY DIDN’T Dali and Plato let go of their things? – Don’t you think they did[?], Arty replied.

Every single human being’s existence is no more nor less than a compilation of memories. Every building block of ones mind lies within his past no matter where he got them from, possible sources being other mammals, reading, dreams, art, music, thoughts or imagination. Therefor the more diverse ones experiences or imaginations are, the more ones mind opens and awakens. The beauty of this all is that we can imagine whenever we want, wherever we want, growing in “being”, much faster than the experimental rate would allow us to, creating a mind that’s more and more awakened and so at ease, capable of letting go.

It doesn’t take much to understand that worries are just like time and truth inexistent, creations of the human mind, only there when one observer truly believes in them. Even the real material physical truth we think we see and touch is only there because our human mind believes it’s there. Just think about this from the secondary-particles-of-cosmic-radiation’s point of view: about one hundred of them are traveling through our bodies every second without noticing our material selves at all. Letting go of material based ideas is the first step towards reality…

How would you define truth[?], Arty asked. – Inexistent[.], I replied. We both smiled.

Every experience makes one stronger in at least one way, by broadening the diversity of the memories that open ones mind. Arty told me why grief is one of the strongest emotions, as the plane had crashed his mother screamed hysterically in the passengers seat next to him kicking the dashboard to pieces while he drove the car to nowhere on a road of tears. When you think you understand something of this life and how to handle it, you get put into place by reality. Reality? This is hard, incredibly hard, but not reality. Just like this is not cold, grief is an emotion not stronger than any others. It is the mind’s perceptual narrowing towards one emotion that blocks out the other emotions from restoring the balance. Easy for me to say…easy for me to say… -Arty agreed.

Before that, we had been talking about girls, about finding that girl that fully understands what you are and mean and breathe, a soul mate maybe, but realizing she realizes what this life in its unreal reality is all about and so knows there is not just one single person like you but every awakened person is the one she could be with just like the negative pole of a magnet sticks to the positive pole of whatever other magnet. We imagined finding that girl and with our awakened minds knew that it was going to be very hard losing that girl, as the thought alone while in our high-on-life-imaginations even made us go quiet. If this would ever happen, I told myself, meditate. Don’t let your mind become the master of your grief, the sentry that guards all your other emotions, but meditate and spent time with the brain switched off, so the balancing can take place and the dematerialized reality can be found back once more.

We talk and we listen while we listen and talk. We know. And even if we don’t, at least we think we know, tricked by the mind that’s been tricked by the mind. Maybe. Maybe, though it is the study of years of observing, thinking, analyzing, reading, feeling, understanding, reasoning, asking, listening, comparing, verifying and dreaming that makes us believe we know. And even if we don’t. At least feeling awake and alive. And so happy. So happy for nothing yet everything.

It is 2:30PM, the lights went out a long time ago and the dance floor downstairs is dark and empty, not a single soul around. It’s quiet when we’re riding home. Just the sound of the dancing trees in the wind. Just the sound of the dancing trees in the wind and our two lively singing joyful voices. We sing Moonlight Drive. Arty knows the words. Arty feels the words and our smiling duet goes on and on forever and ever in my eternal endless awakened dreams. Welcome, to the now…

Floris Serruys