It’s already standing there for 3 days now. The big box, that is. The other one since yesterday.
But I know that it’s gonna last a few more days before I’m willing to remove it.
There are so many important things to do, you see.
1 Of them is this.
People tend to think that I can’t sit still. But deep inside I’m that guy.
I just don’t raise a belly.
Once, right after my guided tour through the brewery, a man came to me. He said I had done a good tour. & He knew, he continued, because he was working in a brewery.
He gave me his card.
Hey, I do have a T-shirt of that brewery, I said. I recognised the picture on his card immediately.
I work there, 2 or 3 days a week, the man told me. I work at the bottling line. But actually I’m an actor.
The man was way over 60. & He was filling bottles, instead of acting.
Yeah, the man continued, the owners are friends of mine. But it’s also because I got to earn myself a living.
At home I found his name on the internet. He was an actor, a website said. But it didn’t mention he was also fillling up bottles.
It might be another one. I do have several T’s from this brewery.
But one I got from the owner himself. Standing a few meters from where this picture was taken. He gave me a few bottles of beer too.
It was his way of thanking me to get him in contact with a Dutch beerimport company.
Without any result. Still, 8 years later, the beers are not available in the Netherlands.
Except when customers are treating me on a beer from their hometown. Then it is, for 1 night, available for me.
Due to all the photographs I’m taking the world is slightly upset.
Things move to the wrong place. A chair on a table, a wooden beercrate on top of a heating, that same heating & also some tv-guides outside & a watercontainer upside down.
That’s just what you get to see. I do see more.
The only thing I can do is put them in a picture, together with a certain T. Maybe it will give them the feeling they will live forever.
I know that feeling. I understand them.
‘Campaign for Surreal Ale’ it says.
Beershirt amidst the grapes. & Some fake plastic hopleaves.
That’s what’s surreal about it.
It hangs there. I keep on putting nails in the underside of my neighboors balcony. Tie the branches up with some short strings.
It keeps on growing. I can’t take my eyes off of it. Although I know that the more I look the less I can see of the growthprocess.
‘…at the O.K. Corral’
When that title pops up in my mind, it won’t leave. It keeps repeating itself.
It’s the rhythm, I guess.
But some days ago it sure was a gunfight right there.
Well, a fight.
And I was the only one who carried a weapon.
It was a massacre.
A slaughter of snails & slugs.
I hate them. & It’s about time they realize they should hate me too.
It was a bit windy this morning. Not to warm either. I needed a longsleeve for underneath my shortsleeve.
Once my favourite: Winderful Brewery. I loved the colour. It’s easy to combine with other T’s.
But suddenly it started to smell.
Sweat.
As soon as I wore it 1 time, there came a hint of sweat in it.
Nobody else could smell it, but I did.
So I always wear it 1 time, not longer than just a few hours.
You’re warned when you see me with blue arms.
The painting on the T indicates that in English a circle master should be the same as a scarecrow.
Well, then I’m a circle master myself, I guess, chasing cats, using my plant spray.
They don’t belong here. This is mine, my circle. It should smell like plants, not piss.
Hops underneath the master & also behind him. You just got to look carefully.
‘When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.’
Henny Youngman
But I can assure you: I will never give up reading.
I always have a book with me. Even when I go to the toilet (that’s through the door behind the T, left door in the corridor).
I just plan to read a book when I go to my favourite bar, together with a ½ ltr german beer. Very often a 2nd one = 10 extra pages.
I read. I am in books. Especially when I drink.
My world is there.
This is where I live.
Or: where I used to live.
I remember 1 summer, I had to be there 7 days a week.
It was the summer Margriet was my girlfriend.
For the rest nobody was there. Just Margriet, the shop & selling beer.
I was wondering, this afternoon, wether it was normal, for me, standing where I stood. Behind the counter, master of the register.
And then it started raining, this afternoon, just when I finished work.
I had to change T-shirts. Long- instead of shortsleeves.
But 1st I had to show people who I was, where I was, who I used to be in a former place where I still was standing.
When I stopped, this picture was taken, everything was dry again.
It’s like Murnau, the director. But shadows are yellow nowadays.
It’s still threatening though.
