Synchronicity
and a stroll to the second hand Sunday market in Antwerp.

So, I have my 'leftist'. A professorlike, weary young man with spectacles who brings serious titles, famous philosophy, medical books, Marx, Freud etc… Than there is my 'witch' (sorry). A frail, grey-haired, middle-aged woman with titles in art, esoteric knowledge, meditation, tarot, toys, herbs and plants. My 'artist' offers old posters, artful decoration and all kind of books about famous painters. Than there is the big 'German guy' with translated titles from Konzalic, World War II, heartbreaking love dramas…...

They have all their personal stories to tell and support the transcendental character of this nice, small market near the river Schelde with the smell and sound of horse coaches (and manure), 'patat frites', 'brown café's' and Chinese take away food.

And today I found something very peculiar: my 'leftist' offered me a wooden roll holder with a long roll of silky paper and some Chinese characters at the front-end that attracted my irresistible attention. It was a selected and limited publication (only 100 pieces), artful and very fragile. Given out in the fall of 1989. And it showed some poems of a Belgian poet, Rudy Witze, a guy I don’t know. (The roll was numbered - Nr 79 - and the price I paid for it was BF 500 = € 12.5 = $ 12). When coming home, I curiously unrolled the whole length of paper (some 2 meters !) and 9 poems became fully visible only now. And I observed at the very end of the roll that these poems had been written in May 1989 on the Tienanmen Square in Beijing at the occasion of the strong upheavals in China, ten years ago……

The two things you have to know extra is first that I have last year finalised the process of healing and integrating a lost relationship (my third divorce). And this relationship also started in May 1989…… And my new girlfriend was at that moment planning a trip to Beijing to attend a 2 week course in acupuncture. A trip that she intended to pay for by bringing back lots of silk cloths as hand luggage and selling them at home with a nice profit. A trip that was ultimately cancelled due to the riots at hand……

Now, the second thing is that I have no real personal interest in poems as I don't understand them very well. But I do have a very strong interest in synchronicity and I study life cycles since 1982 ! This relationship was stopped in March 1996, after a little more than 6,4 years (=2 cycles of 3,2 years) and I bought the roll in May 1999, a little more that 9,6 years after the writing date of the poems (= 3 cycles of 3,2 years)...

Or better said: the roll bought me !