Wie Sind die Clowns

Brussels, 28 May 2010. My daughter wants to listen to music from iTunes in the computer. Her choice? The Swedish artist Zarah Leander singing "Wie Sind die Clowns?". Not much to comment. She's a star! Georgie that is. Well, Zarah too, of course.

Zinneke Parade

Senne or Zenne is the river that runs through Brussels (that's right, the same name as the bigger one in Paris). The river was covered over in the XIX century because of its foul smell from rotting animal carcasses and all sorts of domestic and industrial sludge. It now runs under Boulevard Anspach. Jules Anspach, the Brussels' bourgmestre whose name was given to the Boulevard after his death in 1879, wanted it to be a showcase of modernity. He built beautiful apartment buildings à la parisienne that no one wanted to live in. The Belgian bourgeoisie couldn't really part with their maisons de maître unifamiliales (a sort of national obsession).

Anyway... zinneke is also Brussels' dialect for mutt (many of them ended up in the river) and by extension anything that isn't pure, that is mixed. Like Brussels today.

The Zinneke Parade happens every two years and has been going on for the past 12 years. It's the parade of the mixed, the parade of the mutts. I went there yesterday with my cousin Andreia who was visiting from London. I loved it. It was one of the best Zinneke Parades ever. We stopped by the bar Au Soleil (my hangout in my early days of Brussels in 1996) and watched group after group of ravellers go by. All the mutts of Brussels in a beautiful swirl of colour and fun. I was glad my daughter is growing up here in this town. We are all mutts in here. Yuppeeeeee!!!

Georgie threw paper petals into the air. Some ended up inside a man's beer glass and they both laughed. A lot. We danced to drums and ran away from giant spiders. We saw a cloud that had been caught and brought down to earth. We touched the cloud. I wonder if they released it in the end. I so hope they did.

middle-age

I now realise I'm getting into middle-age when I notice the beauty of youth. Casually. It can happen in the tram, or coming out of the cinema. Or just standing at a corner watching people go by. There's no lust involved, just a pang in the stomach and the tightening of my jaws.

The realisation that their muscles are supple, their tummies are flat, their necks don't flap, their eyes wrinkle only when they smile. Their hair is all on top of their heads and not coming out of their ears, nor sprouting in bushes of grey in unexpected places. Yes, lately I started noticing the beauty of youth. Not before. I felt part of it. Not anymore.

There's no sadness. Maybe a bit of jealousy. Then again that pang in the stomach, sometimes a nervous twitching of the mouth. Or just the intense look of the eagle. I observe how laughter seems to inhabit the body of youth, how they jump with each step, how the sun shines brighter on their skins. The beauty of youth makes even the not-so-handsome young look beautiful. And that's how I realised I'd come to middle-age.