how many different angles can you lose from?

four more years of waiting

i celebrated the heat by going to luddites books & wine and grabbing a laszlo krasznahorkai book i hadn’t read (not the only one i hadn’t read but one which i hadn’t seen translated into english before : “seiobo there below”) nothing says i’ll be normal despite melting like an urs fischer wax sculpture, like trudging through the verbal blizzard of krasznahorkai...

there is no time or interest, to be honest, in mourning or celebrating the fact that belgium beat the united states in a very controversial match where the president of the united states inserted himself into world cup administrative business, because belgium didn’t just beat the usa team, they humiliated them - no one outside of united states was rooting for them, the new symbol of perpetual evil...too preachy, i know, too political, but we all felt this was a new form of injustice, changing the rules at the last minute.....sadly, despite that grand victory, our proud lads could not squeeze past spain and we are out, the world cup is over for us, for the massive crowds gathered at public viewing zones across the country who were completed gutted when the late winning goal went in…it was a brutal string of bad luck…we were genuinely on the verge of forcing extra time despite being completely depleted by injuries…so, for we belgians, even though i am not a belgian yet i am getting closer, i can smell the double-fried ossenwit in the friets now, inching ever closer to freedom to eu citizenship, being knocked out of the world cup sucks…

all of this to avoid telling you that eglė, who many of you know now as my new lithuanian friend, has not been in touch since the stray kiss after belgium’s shocking victory over….i can’t even remember who any more and does it really matter since we are out, we are out…and we won’t have another chance for four more years…by which time i should be belgian and then free to live in a country with a better chance at winning the world cup like france or spain, ha.

what does matter is that they worked out how that fire started…they say that workers accidentally struck a copper water pipe while drilling. they also say that the resulting water leak made contact with the main power supply, triggering a severe short circuit and extreme temperatures…and i have to wonder, i guess i understand for legal purposes to find out why, but what difference does it make to the five women who died…they gave a briefing for the relatives of the victims and the residents of the apartment bloc…unintentional arson and unintentional manslaughter…one of the fatalities is an 80-year-old woman: A resident on the fifth floor. another victim is a 93-year-old resident and her 54-year-old daughter, who was visiting with her own daughter – the granddaughter – to show her school report.

so the fact that eglė is too embarassed by a kiss to return my now three messages which, yes, i know is two messages too many, and hasn’t been back to dutch class, pales in comparison to five different tragedies but for me, who can only reflect on the general nature of tragedy rather than mourn individually, no, it isn’t tragic but it’s a shame…another damp squib so to speak, in the history of near victories and total failures for me…

i also read that the mother and graddaughter tried to flee but thenrealised that the grandmother wasn’t with them. the daughter is thought to have gone back inside, and both of them were then trapped by the smoke.

so again, who cares about the fact that it is hot hot hot...how many variations about complaining about how hot you are, are there? it’s a phenomenon. i no longer suffer the heat, i become like the chuck norris who makes onions cry...i embrace the heat now. i lean into it. it’s the only logical response. spending my days looking for second hand fur coats during my lunch breaks at the maissa vintage in brussels, for example…