modern phenomena; we die in it. But we don’t always have to put up with it, do we? There are things we can – no, must – resist. This week Frank Heinen is targeting park hanging.
It’s summer, and the question is approaching, to speak to Remco Campert, as the turn in a classroom. You know you’ll get it, you just never know when. Either way, he’s never convenient.
Here it comes. So the question.
Or you go to the park.
More and more often, in my opinion, you are driven to the park. Birthdays take place in the park, year closures, school drinks, dates, meetings: park park park.
“What are we going to do in the park then?”
“Little hanging.”
Anyone who lives in a city, or who ever visits it, knows the park, a strip of green grown by trees that have grown crooked by endless puddles. A park that is maintained with all its might, which at the first rays of the sun fills up with small and large groups, sports clubs, primary school classes, student houses, families, friends, acquaintances and strangers and dogs that drop onto the stale grass like Sahara travelers who after three days crawl through the loose sand to finally find a shaded spot.
What you do in the park is somewhat dependent on your age, but in principle ‘being in the park’ is the main activity. ‘Hanging’, is how the park lover describes his intention when asked. I like to look at them, at park hangers. There is a calmness and an aimlessness about them that seem attractive to me. Experienced park hangers don’t take anything with them: no blanket, no food or drink, no toys or book. They arrive at a park, find a spot and the hanging begins, alone or in groups. Sometimes they chat briefly, but in fact any further activity disrupts the lingering, which thrives best in a state of all-encompassing languor.
What you forget when you rush past a park or bike and all that wonderful hanging makes the jealousy inside begin to slosh: the tinny sound of the music from the people ahead. A faint, but unmistakable shit smell. Someone who stands on his head next to you. Pushy ducks. Fitness buffs performing their eccentric exercises with bags, balls and hoops on a packed field, with the blank stares and barely suppressed moans of people operating in an abandoned gym. drunks. The ball that goes down the foot of a kind, but incompetent father who shows How High He Can Shoot on your stomach. The lack of cooling. seagulls. urinating in public. Beginner tightrope walkers. The spirit smoke of disposable barbecues. And the vague feeling that you are relaxing less than the rest.
And that’s all up to that point, if you only knew how to ‘hang’. If you lie on your back, with your book up, your arms will become stiff. If you lie on your stomach, you will feel your hips. Leaning on one arm? Can take a while, until your lower back plays up. And what is that tickle that spreads through your leg over your body? Was that patch of grass wet too? The ground is actually hard and uneven. And my goodness, how disruptive you are. Everywhere in the park people hang like heaps of clothes in the corner, and what are you coming with? What a mess. Embarrassing hassle.
Oh, if only you were old enough to sit on a bench. Or you could only afford your own garden, with garden chairs and all. For the next thirty years, however, you will have to make do with the park.
You will hang until you drop.