Severely translated blog-version
Den Haag, 18/11/2007
Good Tom,
And Richard, with whom I yet have the pleasure to meet,
Tuesday evening I met, upon my arrival from the family printingfirm, your letter on my mat. It read no date so I could only hope to have found it in time. (I have recently put a NO-NO sticker on my door to keep out all the advertisement, for important mail had a tendency of getting lost between it. All the same I could not assure myself wether I had found the letter on the date it was delivered. Hence the tension that I feel concerning the timing of my respons, noting the assumption made in the last paragraph of the letter, and thereupon the start of the letter, where there’s a metaphore of a chicken in winter time; the season that seems to already have started).
I shall begin my reaction with a sketch of my behaviour, alone in my room, directly after reading your letter.
What I did was kneel down on my carpet and cry soundless bursts of joy. I danced motionless, with an utmost strain on all the muscles in my body, and tears welling in eyes that shot through the walls, chasing the multitude of happy omens they could see play before them.
This episode continued itself in waves, until a point of exhaustion that made me grab the bottles of Gin and Tonic I had stored in icy cold.
I then called upon a higher force to grant me back my cool, thus enabling me to carefully cut three razor-thin slices of a lime I had kept especially for this combination of fluids. At my desk this, together with some tabacco, brought me to a start of calmth. I advanced into poetry:
Realer than the bicep-boosted fist shouting from the elbow;
Than a chant too real to let it’s cheer to the ear or the pumping roar for ignition
Without reluctance and without fear ’cause it seems to get realer than that.
Realer than a friend would grabble pieces off, when a witness of the fit,
For it’s no more like a puzzle when realer than this.
That if now the assassin had show, rather words than rage be found.
That he would turn his strike ’round into the heart of his conviction.
Or realer even than choices spent on a vigorous reliance in poisons
And all those familiar songs; And the bore to withhold the new ones from the self-induced lore
When through the hoops of aging down, it just might get something realer
And so forth, you get the impression. I emptied those bottles half way down and awoke without a trace of hangover, feeling revived.
**part missing**
So with all hopes up I beg thee, do let the good city of Rotterdam know I am most willing to lend my hand for the greater benefit of their culture and cultures beyond alike.
Many thanks,
In ready awaiting,
All yours,
Olivier Cornelissen