eve talks with adam

[Photograph taken from an unknown source at the web]

“TELL ME ADAM. Why Blue Earth?”
“That’s what I always wanted to do. To write a book, but I just hadn’t done it yet.”
“A will is fullfilled?”
“Yes. I am happy that it is finished. I am already working on the follow-up.”
“So. Already a second book?”
“Well, yes, not now. That will take a while. I will take another two, three years before I have finished that one.”
“Do you already have a title for it? What is the subject?”
“The working title is HaRPSiCHoRD”.
“HaRPSiCHoRD?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it about?”
“It is a follow-up of Blue Earth. It will become a lot crazier and different than my début.”
“And Blue Earth?”
“I wrote the book in a year and with the necessary corrections it took another half of a year to finish it. The book sprouted from old texts, poems, essays etcetera. I put everything in one document and from those texts I started to write a story. I had no idea where it would lead to, so that was something special for me.
“Hard work?”
” You can say that, but it was most of all surprising to see where the creativity, the characters, the events, the dialogues lead to. Those are things you haven’t in control completely, sometimes you have, sometimes you don’t. It is a real fascinating profession, writing. It is the first time I ever publish something. So why? Well, if I knew that.”
“You just wanted to tell a story.”
“Yes. Ultimately it became a story about Adam and Eve in our current epoch.
“Is that so?”
“Well yeah, about two namesakes. About two people who became alive into each other’s eyes, were drifted apart and are now on the road to… What did you think about the book?”
“I was surprised. Good surprised. It is distinctive. You write beautiful. It is…”
“You read it to the end. That I find already extra-ordinary.”
“Yes, untill the last page. What a surprise at the end. Who would have thought that?”
“It’s only the beginning.”
“Oh? Who is Adam? Who is Eve?”
“We are all Adam and Eve.”
“So I am Eve and you are Adam.”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“And?”
“Why?”
“Yes, your book. You said you have built it up from texts that you wrote before.”
“Not completely. There were texts that I wrote in the nineties, clippings, notes, a few texts from a course of Willem Jan Otten, the winner of the prestigious Constantijn Huygens price. Those texts were for me like loose exercises; the first literary steps in life. It wasn’t much. A page or twenty, thirty and some poetry. From those texts I went further…”
“What did he find of your texts?”
“I remember he found them quite good. I had no time however to write further. Years later it finally became reality. Two years ago I thought it became time to write a book and now it is done. Chapter 7 of the novel is partly based on a text I wrote during his course. That was in 1995 or somewhere around that year.”
“Did he read your book?”
“No, I still have to send it to him. I just have it published. I am curious whatever he thinks of it.”
“So, Adam… Chapter 7. That is actually the beginning of the novel; the moment that Adam and Eve are born in this world. You just started at the beginning.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, that one of the first things you wrote are taking place in the beginning, in the garden of Eden.”
“Oh yeah”
“And from there on this story is created.”
“You can say that.”
“You are worried in the book, isn’t it? The nightmare…”
“Well, it is a fantasy… Happily sal alles reg’ kom.”
“Sal alles reg’ kom?”
“Yes. South-African. You know. Breyten Breytenbach. Everything will become OK.”
“Breyten…?”
“A great writer. South-African writer during the apartheidsregime. White advocate for the free rights of the African people.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We are all equal and also different, one humanity. All of us share this little earthball and we need to cherish this earth.That is what this book is about, in spite of all the differences, the contrary meanings, cultures, the roads we should not have walked upon…”
“It is about finding the unity in the diversity?”
“Yes.”
“In spite of this underlying layer I have laughed a lot about the dialogues. You are serious and at the same time not at all. Is that correct?”
“Thank you. That’s right.”
“Yes, with pleasure. Really silly and absurd sometimes.”
“I have done my very best on that. The daily conversations. The usual, the little, a few people round a table. During the writing of the novel I found out it could lead to anything, all sides. I noticed myself that it was becoming more and more a parody, but that isn’t worked out completely. That will be deepened in HaRPSiCHoRD. Ah, who knows, in a year or so, then it maybe will become a drama. Really. It is all new and I let myself go with the flow. I do not write with a plan. Like now this and then that. I have a scene in my mind, or idea, a happening and with that I start a few days spontaneously. If it is something I like, then I work it out…”
“Adam, your book did surprise me.”
“It is my pleasure.”
“But, eh, many things are not correct. Really most of it isn’t true at all. You changed everything, what Eve is saying isn’t right, what Adam says isn’t correct. You have made it all up. How can you change all these experiences? Here, take it, a pillow for your stupid skull. I start a fight with you! Here! It has never happened like that!”
“Yes, you too. A thick pillow against your brain. Take it!”
“And then all this nonsense about this scientist that everything is an illusion, one big holographic projection. Here! Feel this one, then you know what is real and what is an illusion!”
“Ouch, not so hard!”
“And another one! All real. Everything is real. No illusion! Do you feel?”
“Yes, take this one. Here! I will give you a piece of spanking with duck feathers.”
“If you did not know it yet; the book it now and then a persiflage, a banter. Things, words, names put into a different context. Word games. All…”
“This one is for your head.”
” The characters are pulling the leg of the writer.”
“I will pull at your leg. Here let me pull at your short leg. One more time!”
“Yes, that’s enough. Come in my arms.”
“Tell me Adam. Do you want to kiss me?”
“OK, because it is you, sweetest Eve.”
“Mmm, that was nice.”
“Yes. Your kiss is sweet. How can it be Eve, that you are such a delicious kisser?”
“I learned it from you, sweety-pie.”
“Mmm. I learned it from you.”

(End of the conversation, because it became time for something much nicer.)