There is theory, and practice. In theory I probably know more about human behavior then the average person. And that’s not bragging, average just mean that I share a place with 3 to 4 billion people, but modesty is also a vice.

I think that by the time I left my parents house, out of that bubble into a bigger one, that I started to look away from my navel and into the world. Moving from a small village to a big city, and later, joining the Marines. Around that moment I started to see the people around me as characters, characters with there own little traits and colors. Like cars, there are thousands of them, but you can separate them into kinds, brands, worn-out, or brand new. I didn’t just see unique individuals, but also all the similarities. I was intrigued, but either I didn’t know how to ask, or no one had a clue what I was talking about. It felt like I was the only one seeing this, and asking these questions.

I was just interested in how this all, being here, on this rock, works. I just turned eighteen and life lived me for another 5 or 6 years, till one day I walked into a bookstore. It just happened to be that I lived close to a place in Holland, it is called Deventer, and they have, or had, once a year the biggest open air bookmarket in Europe, and because of that there where dozens of book antiquarians located in the city. It was not hard to find a nice bookstore and look around. I remember vividly that I didn’t look at all the so called “self help books” where people offer answers to life’s questions. I had seen enough of the world by then to realize that a lot of people proclaim to have the answers to life’s questions, but how can you have a thousand different answers to that one question? I learned early on that if you read a book about life and you walk away with answers, you have read the wrong book. A good book leaves you with maybe one or two hints to an answer, but many more questions.

Something was not right so I walked past the 5 or 6 bookcases full with these questionable self help books to the one bookcases where I saw two shelves with books about philosophy. I new about philosophy, but I am also a visual person, and the quiet book covers, without bold statements, told me that these books didn’t need to lie to me, to be sold. I still remember one of my first books, it’s a Dutch book wherein several philosophers write about the place where reason goes over into…unreason.

I try not to write more then 500 words every night and I am getting there, but I am still far away from my point… The poem I chose for today was from Day 1226, written in August 2019.

Shadows sometimes stay behind

when you leave

I wanted to write a few words about why I am so busy with this stuff and then give some insights about the poem I wrote. I will keep it short: have you ever left a room full of people, and a few hours, or minutes, later you start to wonder what kind of impression you left behind. Your deceitful mind plays a trick on you, and misremembers the conversations you had, and you wonder if that stain was there all along. That’s the shadow that stay’s behind, and clouds the past.