Red Lights

It’s a strange world. The things your heart seeks the most. Your heart never seems to find.

Everywhere i’m standing in the front of a red light. I’m starting to hate that big red light. I’m trying to find a big hamer to smash it, but i’m to afraid that i will turn another nail of my fingers in a blue color. I lost almost my middlefinger and one nail is never gonna be the same again. So my hamer is just laying in my eyesight. Ready to be drawed.

The works of Euralia are completely putted to a stop. A house that i bought with all the official papers seems they are not all that official. Illegal structures are suddenly on my land and i need to prove that there is really standing a house since the years i don’t know. I wonder if i didn’t bought a ghost house or maybe i’m just living in a farm created in my mind. I’m probably just walking around on a bare piece of land. Damned , now i think about it, My pore neighbors. They have seen certain images that i probably don’t want to see from myself.

Two years .i’m already working to get an official document of the legality of euralia . And every time the city makes up another argument to disprove my application. A non existing house, a door that s to far away , to less duplicates of the application, and on and on it goes . 

And every thing has to be payed, and because i earn millions driving around with carparts, it s not really a problem. But eventually my lamborghine is gonna run out of fuel and i'll have to drive around with my mercedes. And all the parties that i’m giving to all my friends every week that s also gonna come to an end. And my daily dinner in a fancy restaurant with my girlfriend is gonna end to. I'll have to say goodbye to my luxury live.

I never thought about it but money is really important . Slowly and very slowly without knowing , you start to get in a social isolement. Your world is getting smaller and smaller , and i’m already living in a non existing house. The free time you have you try to spend it to escape out of that  money isolement . Trying to start up a project that  exist already for a few years in my head, The making of funny objects for home and garden. But its all a vicious circle , on the end you can t make things real from your imagination , and i’m already living in a imaginary farm. 

I’m starting to believe that maybe everything is imaginary

So i really do apologise to all my friends , lovers, haters that i’m living on my isolated imaginary piece of land . But i promise one day i will escape from all that imaginary, and then we all have a real barbie in a real world.

Hansy in numberland

Yes , i’m still here.

I found a job. One day a phone call changed everything again. I could start a new job. A job i managed to get without the interaction of interim . The effort of my stubbornness to call again and again for a job that i was interested in ,was finally opening his doors.

I was stepping in the world of millions of car parts.

The company is situated a few k’s away and there were two shifts . A perfect situation in my case. It ‘s an international distribution centre of car parts trough the world. The red light on the fork of the road turned green and i was driving again in a direction i wanted to go.

So nowadays i m driving around with a little forklift , called a BT. Unbelievable how many parts there are collected together to make a car. I’m driving around trough million of car parts laying above and beneath, to the left and to the right .Packages everywhere in all kind of shapes. My task is to put packages with a serial number in a certain spot where it belongs. 

An eight hour shift looking at numbers . Trying to find the difference between the numbers ,  because certain boxes are just look-a-likes. 34BD86-ATO312 34DB68-ATC312 . So at nighttime i’m not counting sheep but numbers. Numbers and letters are just popping up in my head. And with regrets i concluded that my eyes are missing certain parts of the letters and numbers. The sharpness of the lines was gone. Damned. I needed artificial help. With magnifying glasses the sharpness came back and mistakes were banned.

The hours that i had to race amongst the million car parts gave me extra hours to work on my own dreams. The garden is coming along even with a delay that wasn’t part of my dreams. I was able to put a 6 mil drill bit trough my middle finger while hanging some climb ropes for my precious plants. Projects are possible to fulfil and furniture is a part of it. The shape of a middle age table was getting produced. 

And still while i, m driving around with my little forklift full of parts of a car ii hope that an officer and a gentleman is gonna walk trough the door and take me up in his arms , walk away to a wonderful life. Na, that's not a good thought !

Earth movement

I took a shovel and didn’t stop shoveling for three months.

Unstoppable , from dust till dawn the dirt was flying in all directions. Mountains were created , piles of dirt were moved and holes were digged. 

The frustration of not finding a job was giving me a boost of energy. The only thing that had his advantage in those frustrating times was the lonely wild garden in the town of Loksbergen. 

I digged my thoughts away. Thoughts i wouldn’t think about. I was living in a future imaginary world, things and plans that i could do. The way i wanna live , the way i wanna work. And then you had the real world that was forcing me to dig and to keep digging till the time was there to step back on a plane and leave this fantasy rainbow world behind.

I was wondering if maybe i should have come as an illegal or a refugee to my birth country.  

Maybe then it was easier to find a job and to receive financial support. As a born Belgian returning to your birthplace you start completely a new. No work means literally no money. 

No minimal live support of the country where you were born in. So the clock was ticking.

And real hard and fast. 

Another pile of dirt was moved. Another path was created. But the final flight was getting closer and close relations were getting further.

More frustrations and more isolated i just kept digging. Alone and sweaty . But hè , the garden of the second Eva was starting to get a shape. A pile of dirt excising of stones, bricks and other building shit ,that was laying around the last two years was shattered away to create a path in the backyard. The backyard full of weed and wild plant received his first pathway and his first water leveled area. An underground network of rats was exposed and ruined by the never ending dig of the shovel. Skeletons of murdered pigs were exposed. It’s amazing what you find if you keep digging of frustration.

But with all the joy of digging up useless artifacts i forgot that the clock merciless kept ticking away time , a few more weeks and that was the end of all the plans and dreams that i had to start a new chapter. 

All my good spirit and intentions were also shoveled away. All that was left over was a tired   dreamer robbed of his dreams with a shovel in his bare hands full of blisters.

Frustrations

There are no words for. 

Three months of subscribing to every database you imagine that’s job related. Three months of applying for jobs ,jobs from mailman to iron melting , while losing the counts of  the amount of jobs you put your name on, and  even managing to apply different times for the same job. 

But what makes it so frustrated is that you receive every week an email saying there are 10342 new jobs available but you never gets a response of all the  mails you send.

But maybe it s my previous work that i did for a interim office and the comments i had that put me on a blacklist. like they do when people aren’t able to pay there bills anymore. I never heard  an interim office again after my post. Maybe they started to think i am one of those investigators from a TV show that goes undercover.

But my frustrations are having consequences. My believe in my weekly email that says there are 12322 new jobs available is gone. My believe that a interim office really calls you because they really want you to have a job , is gone. Maybe they get a fonds for every new client they get in there database. Because once you react on a job ad , the interim office contacts you straight away to come to the office because the job ad is urgent. and once you are in the date base you are lost and forgotten.

The final drop in the bucket was when one of the interim said they couldn’t help me because i was already in there database.

So i’m wondering if everything is a cover up of the real situation. There are no jobs. Interim just are paying them selves by getting as many employees and getting the big firms to do excursions in there own company by interim employees.

But my frustration doesn’t stop. At the end i need money and in desperate times you try to look for other means. Online there are millions of ways to make millions, but they are only creative people who are trying to make there own money by willing people who freely post a little bit of money in the hope they get a lot of money in return but still are waiting for that money. So maybe i have to start asking donations and financial support on the Internet.

So the big smile i had when i stepped from the plane is gone. I am a immigrant in my own birth country. Choices that i made freely are changed to choices that i m obliged to do involuntary. The rainbow i saw shining is a long way away and getting every day further and further. 

Everybody has his own life that demands there own time. 

Mrs. D

Mrs. D. is gone. A tear rolls down on my cheek.

Flashbacks are going trough my head.

My first encounter with this lady. I barely payed attention to this old lady. She was standing lonely in the back , all covered in dust, ignoring everyone and everything. just waiting. It’s because a good mate putted my attention to the red beast standing in the corner , that i looked at here. i really could say that It wasn’t love on first sight. No, still to this moment i thank Koen to persuade and introduce her to me . 

Since that moment on, we were inseparable. All kind of adventures were laying ahead of us.  As in every relation , we had our good days and bad days. We cursed, cried and laughed. 

One of the trips i still remember was the box road trip. Twenty two boxes were stacked on the roof rack and we drove from Melbourne to Alice springs , trying to avoid every low bridge that was on our way.. She didn’t give a sound with all that weight on her back. and we just cruised for three days trough the red desert and finally the boxes were safely delivered in the outback town. Not one box left behind on this memorable road trip.

But Mrs. D. was on her best on the dirt track. That’s also were she gets her name from. Mrs. Dirty. Her steady slow speed on the bitumen was just a camouflage of what was really in her heart. We travelled on unexplored tracks, drove on the sandy beaches , conquered steep sand dunes and crossed wild rivers. She loved it all. And she never let me down at all those moments. We travelled thousands of k’s on dirt and slept together at those wonderful spots we discovered on those many explorations. Our hearts were alike. We showed a relax and easygoing presence but we were un tamable and wild when we were in the right environment.

We spend 7 years together, shared everything. Intimate moments and public moments. Embarrassing moments and moments to be proud off. We had it all. So it was a sad day when our roads together took a different turn. 

It was time to say good bye to her and just to keep the memories of her alive.A lost touch , a last look at her standing again alone 

Farewell my lovely trusted Mrs D. 

Escape from DH(e)L

Yes, I found a job. 

I was on my way on the Belgian highway to my first Belgian working day. Happy as i was to finally start a new financial life at DHL  Zaventem Brussels Airport, a place i visited a few times in my previous life.

Immediately at the start of the afternoon shift i was thrown to the lions, better said to the thousands and thousands of post packets, Not even a knowledge how the system really works or what i was contributing too. The supervisors were friendly and helpful till the moment our main supervisor arrived, Suddenly the environment changed. People were getting nervous and stressful. I didn’ t really know why, but i would experience it first hand the next few days.

Trucks were unloaded by hand the first thing in the midday shift. Our main supervisor Sonia is so focused on speed that we were demanded to thrown packets from unfriendly heights for post packages on to the ground. No time to waste. I was wondering if she knew the meaning of the combination of letters FRAGILE on a post package. 

But it was my first day at work, who am i to know how it works and doubt the post knowledge from someone who did it for years. 

The second task i was forced to do that first day by Sonia was sticking postcodes on the packages on a speed you couldn’t imagine. A speed that was forced by her to make mistakes. Recognising a bunch of numbers and verifying it was the same as on the sticker you held in your hand and sticking it on the package in less then a second is not so easy.

The second day i was off again to my work. Noticing my enthusiasm was down to 75 %. Our supervisor Gunther welcomed us with open arms and made a few jokes to improve the  work environment. It wasn’t that bad , no, i would survive this day too. 

This day i was obliged by sonia to do another task. I had to scan the package and reload it to a container ready to ship off to his next destination. But it was hard to understand how to operate the process of the computer program if it was forced to learn by somebody who doesn’t know the difference between a shift or tab key. And if you asked a question to sonia about the meaning of the codes and order of the process , you get an answer like “that ‘s how it s done” . I started wondering if she was really of human flesh because she ignored every question i had about the process. Maybe she was a also a programmed robot , but unlucky i couldn’t find the shift button or is it the tab button to shut her down.

It was already the third day. I made it that far. I was down to 50 % of enthusiasm . But a strange thing happened that day , a smile was on my face , i made jokes with my fellow prisoners. And work really went well. We even had finished sorting all the packages an hour before closing time. Our supervisors were relax and friendly . Work was not forced but also not lazy,  just at human speed with a minimum of human errors and respect for the packages. But then i noticed it. Our SS-commander sonia wasn’t there . This was a good day.

Thursday, the second last day of the week, yes, i’m gonna make it till the end of the week. I was back up to 60 % of motivation and still going up till the moment i saw my fellow prisoners shaking by a voice. Damned , sonia, came running around like if she had an enormous dildo sticking in a place you don’t want to know. 

I was forced to work in a way by a donkey with only the carrot in front of her eyes that my own safety was put in danger. A stupid guitar box that i placed out of my way because i had to loaded heavy big post packages was placed back by the donkey in my way of movement, so i almost tripped over it. I still wonder why she had to place it back, maybe she wanted that i would open that box and start playing a guitar song for her.

So This was my final day 

I placed the guitar back out of my way and suddenly she yelled and disappeared that she was getting security. She showed her face again without security an ordered me to unload the truck again with the guitar back at his uncomfortable spot. My enthusiasm to stay dropped like something i had never seen before. I throw one more post package on the bad. A second one, a third one, another one. No. what was i doing. Would i put my life in danger , would i lose my self respect, would i let myself command that way for a job a voluntary went for.

No, i walked away.

As a prisoner i was guided by sonia to the door ,like she really was a SS-commander guiding me to the death camps. But what she really was doing was guiding me to freedom and a respectful life.

An old new begin

18 December i landed on Belgian soil. A flight without problems, even my luggage was there. I just walked out of the airport like an ordinary tourist. 

I was empty , drained of all my energy.  Like a zombie i walked outside to catch my ride home. But nobody there. I looked around to find a glimpse of my ride .  My exhausted hart turned a beat over. I saw a woman with red hair. Could it be ? I walked closer and yes. This was a welcome surprise . My search of beauty was over.  I found the rainbow i was looking for after my trip to hell.

The following days were all a blur. To much emotions, to many thoughts. Too many things were coming at me. It wasn’t my regularly trip overseas. This time i didn’t had a return ticket in my pocket. This time i wasn’t on a holiday. Things needed to be organised. Mrs, D wasn’t sold yet. I still had my mobile connection with Australia. Over here i only had my Belgian mobile number and a farm that asked a lot of man hours of work. No kitchen, no bad, no bed.

The following weeks just passed by running from one place to the other. A new passport and a new identity needed to be ordered. A new job has to be find. But first things first. i just had a hell of a job finished and i still had a jet lag coming. As usually the next days i felt a sleep at times you don’twant to know and I was trying to recover the kilos fat that i left at Warraga. No i needed to relax. Enjoy the beauty of my rainbow. 

Xmas was closing in without knowing. But still it was a Xmas to remember. Mattresses were brought down, and a living room was created in a relaxing lounge. What a difference this was with four weeks ago, when i was sleeping in a swag in the entertaining room of an abandoned mining town. And i have  to confess , i liked it, i really do. My mind was relaxed , and just enjoying the company. I even had the time to take up my former artistic talents.

And suddenly it was January, Old year was gone. Just my memory of fireworks and a night of games told me that it really has passed by. In the mean time i was fully recovered of my jet lag, and my mind was starting to tell me that i wasn’t here for a holiday. 

Slowly i started to do little tasks to keep my mind at ease. My mind had thousand and one issues where it worked at. And my body was just running after it. But slowly , piece by piece things were getting organised. Paperwork was almost at his end. A road was starting to form. 

A bath and even a kitchen that was get rid of at the right time , was installed in my future home. But the need of a job was getting urgent and was taking my good humor away. Thousand of jobs available but none straight away. To keep my good sense and rest , i attacked the farm. I kept my mind busy from dawn till dusk for improvements in the little farm. I kept myself so busy that i forget about my surroundings. 

Forget about more important things. Forgot that i wasn’t alone in my little farm. That there is a life out there.

Especially one that gives me a lot of beauty.

My last week

Exhausted , marked and 10 kilos lighter i was spending my last week in the promised country.  Trying to organise the last details. Trying to erase my existence at the yard 58. 

I stuffed the bin of the yard for the last time full of stuff my over weighted bag couldn't.t take. The last memories thrown away . My last precious things where i spend my adventures with were sold. My never malfunction Engel , who always has given me the cool refreshment in those warm hot days , was gone. The roof top tent where it all started with. The idea to travel the Kimberly's ,but never was realised, and to spend the nights on top of the roof far away of the crocs, was gone. A gen set, travel books and my black baked cooking gear gone, even my black billy who always made delicious coffee above the campfire gone. I saw it all go , telling myself again and again i made the right choice. 

After 5 weeks that my mind didn’t had the time to think. Now my days were just filled with time to think. No more work, Just plenty of time just wondering what to think. And as we know a mind has a way of his own.  One Day felt like a week, an hour felt like a day, a minute as an hour , and a second as a minute. Time just creeps on. 

A good thing that happened was , that i was on my way to pick up a good mate at the airport. A mate with the same background and history. We spend my last week at a relaxing mood. Mrs D. had here last trip , showing her best qualities on the dirt track. As ever , she just cruised to the difficult Boggy Hole. Me and Koen spend the night under the millions stars that the Australian sky offers. My last time i was at my favorite camping spot.   Even the dingos were howling me goodbye that night.

Still there were things that occupied my mind. We went to a few goodbye barbies of the community of the central dessert. A farewell party of a bush team member and a culinary dinner at the back of the workshop. A night that was filled with laughter and pure honesty. Nights you seldom are able to participate.

And then suddenly it was time. My last morning in the red centre. Time to clean 3 square metre area that i called home for the last two years. In a minimum of time all that history was wiped away. Just an orange coloured mark of candle wax on the wall says , Hansy was here. The taxi arrived , i looked back for the last time. Mrs D. looks abandoned. The lonely towel on the cloth line just hangs there waiting for the next one who comes a long. No trumpets and no sirens, just a normal day. Two guys who are taking a cap to the airport. Koen was heading to Melbourne again, and i was going a bit further.

My luggage was checked in , all the way to my destination. It was all going smoothly. Just relaxed cruising from one flight to the other, and there were a few that were a head of me. A short flight from the red centre too the world city Melbourne. This was the time Koen was heading his own way and i had my last 5 hours in the land of Oz. 

11.35 P.M.  Time to step on the plane, while texting the last messages that i will be out of the air for the next 12 hours. 

The wheels were lifted from the ground. I lost touched with the Australian soil. My mind was questioning it self. I looked in the distance, leaving behind 7 years of memories and flying to a known place and a future totally unknown.

Again !!!

Back from hell (part 2)

The job wasn’t finish yet, The steal coffin needs to be cut halfway in the height. The height of the building was something machines couldn’t reach. It was up to the human body ,torch and our little cage of the scissor lift .

There was only one team left over at the war zone. The Russians were send home for trespassing certain unwritten bush rules. The suites and breathing mask were the past.  It was a time of fires and burns.

11 hours a day we were swinging in the basket of the scissor lift, oxy cutting steel frames. Against the wind and with the wind. Dropping down tons of steel .Cursing in Belgian slang and cursing in German slang. At the end of the day , when we had the ground back under our feet we weren’t able to walk straight. Coppers would fine us immediately without a drunk test. 

Living at heights for the last weeks is a strange feeling. You get used to be in the air. The arms of the scissor lift are stretched every day a little bit further till you reach the full lenght. Every day we try to maneuver the flexible arm trough and under the steel skelet while the basket dances on the flex of the steel. Whole days we are looking down at the fires we started with the oxycutting. Looking down at the steel we dropped from a height of 38 metres. And once and a while a tool drops down in the chaos underneath us, disappearing for ever. 

We started to look more and more as B- actors out Mad Max 5 . My face grew harder and harder, And with every hot spark of melted iron that was flying down on me, my mood and patience were going down too. Even the rain transformed the war zone in a chemical wasteland. Everybody has a safe zone where he function in a social acceptable behaviour. Once fatigue, stress , the absence of beauty, lonelynes and a spark that lands on private parts ,you step out that safe zone. You become as destructive as the environment you live in. Anger becomes a part of you, not even knowing why. And if a destructive world were i was living in comes in contact with another part of the world it can go wrong.

After 5 weeks working 7 days for 12 hours, the bitch was going down. The end of an era of gold and copper mining was finally closed. The only thing standing was a skelet of melted and twisted frames of steel in the chemical wasteland. The once majestic asbestos building was no more. We had finished the job. 3761 sheets of asbestos were laying somewhere in a abandoned water pool, 63 ton of steel was laying twisted on the ground waited to be cut in small pieces and to be transported to be melted.We did it ! Me and my German friend. We survived,

It’s time to escape from hell. It’s time the war ends. It s time to step in the car , to drive away to look for beauty, to look for a bird , a living tree, to enjoy a rainbow.

Back from hell (part 1)

Finally, another bush trip.

A new team , a new kind of bush trip. An old gold and copper mine build in the sixties, Warraga , the place build out of asbestos.

First we had a learn and go course about asbestos. An international bush team, two Russians, a German, a Belgian and one Australian learning about the dangers and handling about this dangerous stuff. It s a strange thing when they tell you that it only damage your body after 50 years. Makes you wonder if i look do that young? 

Yes , a bush job, happy as i was , we were heading to the old mine site. But i did’t know where i was heading too. Once at site my smile wasn’t that big anymore. A small camp in the middle of a war zone. A world of destruction. Not a single building was intact. Not a single tree was a live. Not a single bird was decorating the endless blue sky. 

One immense large coffin was standing in the landscape. Our job.

3761 sheets of asbestos , waiting to be pulled down by our international team. A scissor lift was waiting , lonely, for his habitants for the next weeks. Two teams were made, German/Russian and Belgian/Russian. The scissor lift ready to be tested to her full capacity and beyond . The first sheet came down, the second one pulled down, the third one placed in the cage, the fourth one taken of the wall. Going down to deliver the sheets, and back up to number 32, 33, 34 ,35 ,36 . So the days went on. After a while you lose the count of numbers and happiness, Decontamination showers were taken every break. Nerves were tested.

Slowly the walls were getting stripped. The first wind after 50 years was howling trough the building. The dust gathered in those years was taken away and blown away to new places.  And slowly impatience grow, private spaces were invaded. And by the time the walls were stripped ,the teams were also torned apart . It became cold war 4 , Russians versus Europeans. New teams were made naturally before some war acts could take place. Living on the edge of fatigue and exhausting , survival instincts are taking over your mind and body. No mercy for the weak, no mercy for stupid jokes, no mercy for meaningless talk. Every little bit of energy that could be spared , was spared.

The asbestos roof was the only thing left over that needs to be brought down. The Russians were wisely send away to do other jobs on site. It was only me and the German on the 47 metre high roof pulling down sheet by sheet. I was reliving past memories. All suite up, masks and climbing gear walking up and down the endless roof. 45 degrees heat, the sound of your breathing, the sweat dropping in your mask, your mind numb, not feeling. not thinking, just moving. It was a memory of a day in the Swiss alps. 

But slowly, very slowly, Sheet number 3759 was pulled down, 3760 was taken away. Suddenly there was only one more sheet left over. Me and the German looked at the lonely sheet , is that it? Is this the last sheet? We smiled to each others as real conquerors. We did it.

But how could we know, it was just a warm up. The bitch wasn’t down yet.