Tidying up is a good way to clear your mind. If you haven’t had it in your hands for three years, it can go, mother taught us. That may be true for many things. But books? You don’t throw away books. Even if they are books you will never read. So I decided to take three boxes of books I once received to the thrift store. There were many cars queuing up there to deliver stuff. When it was the turn of the car in front of me, two banana boxes with books were unloaded. The bringer was thanked and could continue driving. The thrift store employees quickly looked through those boxes and then threw the books in the waste container. When it was my turn, I asked if they threw away books anyway. “That depends on whether they are nice books,” said the man. There you go, I thought. I said I would have to think about it some more and drove on. I had once received those books from someone who was cleaning up. I didn’t think they were nice books. Someone else might. But never throw away books.
There are also things that I once thought were too beautiful to get rid of, but that are no longer of any use to you. I then put them in boxes so that I could later decide at my leisure what I really wanted to keep and what not. So I went through those boxes again. Came across all kinds of things. My old Zippo. A mini replica of Tintin’s rocket. Tickets for a Prince concert. Picks. Used guitar strings. Cords. An envelope with photos. I looked at the photos. Oh yeah, that was nice. Prague. I met someone in November. In December we were on the train to Prague. We heard and saw Don Giovanni for the first time in the hall where Mozart himself conducted the premiere in 1787. It was winter in the city. We were more in love than anyone else.
I looked dreamily out the window for at least seven minutes. Then I checked the news and saw on RTV Drenthe: ‘Jewish foundation cancels activities in Emmen’. With a photo of the synagogue on Julianastraat. I had managed to push aside the nauseating anger of the last few weeks. In a bright flash I was back in the increasingly chilly now.