What do you bring to someone with a broken head? | Joost Oomen reads a Jubel

One of my best friends has an injury. It’s not an ankle that needs to be iced, it’s not an arm in a sling, it’s not a blister where a plaster can provide relief. My friend has a broken head.

He has worked and thought too hard, causing bruises on his mind, and if he now wants to do gymnastics with his brain, that is not possible. That’s very annoying, because gymnastics is his job. He is an artist.

What do you bring to someone with a broken head? I remember that, as a 10-year-old boy, I once broke another boy’s arm playing football, after which my mother sent me to his house the next day with a sandwich bag full of licorice, but I am now far too old for a bag of licorice. old. It’s not the flu or appendicitis so a fruit basket full of pears won’t work unfortunately. A bunch of flowers? But which flowers?

Flower one

A camel lives in a circus. The camel is unhappy and also lonely, because he is the only camel that accompanies the circus. One day in October, it is the end of the season, the youngest employee of the circus forgets to close the cage properly and the camel walks out, disappears into the bushes, leaving the circus further and further behind him. When he is sure that he will not be found again, he bends down to eat something. He opens his mouth over a dandelion, but changes his mind when he sees how beautifully yellow it is. He closes his big lips and blows warm breath from his nostrils over the dandelion.

Flower two

A normal building in Paris. Just like in all other apartment complexes, there lives a family with four little boys, a man who watches television in dirty underpants, a hairdresser who is forever in love, an old lady with a denim jacket and a very large dog. Only this building is different. Because a crow dropped seeds on the roof of this building. A gigantic blackberry bush grows on this building, high above the street. And at the top of the blackberry bush, almost against the stars, grows a small, white flower.

Flower three

A blue violet, between the tracks, of an abandoned Portuguese train station.

Good friend, cut out these three flowers. You read them on newspaper, you only need scissors, you can put them in a vase without water. They won’t make your head feel better, they won’t smell great, but they will bloom forever. If you feel sad or sad, you can look at the flowers by reading the flowers. They are no longer in the vase in front of you on the table, they are in the vase in your head.

And before you know it, there is no longer just a vase. Before you know it, you will have fields full of blooming flowers.

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