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Water Wisdom Windows

Eva Lucia Dekkers experiences the city of Ghent as a reflection in its winter waters and a personal childhood memory.

“You only need three things to know everything”, was the first thing she said to me. By Becca Barnfield

Like every Saturday morning, I walk to my favourite coffee bar in the city center. The weather is finally nice again, I wear my summer dress and carry the fresh, second best newspaper under my arm. I didn’t open it yet. I used to read it while walking but nowadays I prefer speculating for a while about if and how they wrote about the same topic I did. I enjoy this weekly ritual of mine and over time I developed a good sense for things that might potentially disrupt it. One of those things is right in front of me sitting next to the channel. I don’t have children. However, I do care about the little humans on this plannet. This particular one by the channel is wearing a yellow dress and looks rather lonely. I feel responsible. While approaching her, I notice the yellow on her dress are little flowers. “Hello miss, are you having a nice, sunny Saturday morning?” I sit myself next to her on the waterside, not to close. She nods and says “You only need three things to know everything.” The delighted tone in her voice surprises me. Communicating with children is fun if you know how to do it. “That sounds fascinating, please tell me your secret!” I say with the same enthusiasm. She must be around nine years old and clearly not from a poor family.

She must think I lost my parents. This might be fun, I got kind of bored. Not that I don’t like talking to you Sue! I quickly look down at the water window but Sue doesn’t seem angry. After one hour there is just not much left to ask and this woman seems nice. And she wants to know my secret… They always say that at first, let’s see if she means it.

“Grownups think it is weird, I don’t often share my secret with them anymore.” “Well, I work for the papers, I hear and write about many weird things.” She smiles, I hope she doesn’t ask what I write about. “Are you a journalist?” She asks. “Yes I am.” “Cool. I will be a journalist too… I will tell you my secret if you write about it.” “I can write about it, but it needs to be an extremely good secret in order to be published.” “Oh it is very good, my dad even says it is preposterous”, she says with pride. I smile. “Interesting… Where is your dad? And your mom?” “They are still sleeping, my nanny was supposed to pick me up but she didn’t.” “Why didn’t you tell your parents?” “They don’t want to be disturbed till three o’clock”, her feet start dangling. “I don’t mind, I am never alone, the weather is perfect to…”, she continues whispering, “see the secret.” Her feet stop dangling and she adds, “But I am pretty thirsty”. “Well, would you like to join me to my favourite coffee bar? I will treat you to a lemonade and you can tell me about your secret on the way.” “Okay. Like an interview?” “I guess so. And after the interview we will nock on your parents door together.” We stand up and continue walking alongside the channel to the bar. “My name is Becca by the way.” “Hi Ben, my name is Rosalie but I prefer Rose.” “Nice to meet you Rose, I am very curious about your secret.”

Funny enough there are also three ways of explaining my secret and it really depends on the person which on to use. I could tell her I look for the wisdom windows when I don’t know the answer to a question, or I could tell her the scenario in which I make the world and everyone around me look stupid for not using the wisdom windows, as if it is common knowledge, and there is the one in which I make my secret sound like a magical solution that will bring world peace. I think a combination of the last two will be best for a journalist.

“Well Becca, I found that we humans are not the smartest people. There are way smarter ones but we prefer to focus on ourselves. Well, I learned to look for them and their wisdom when I have a question or just when I am bored. And I became very good at it. I always see the answer to my questions. They don’t share their wisdom very easily. You need three keys before you can see their wisdom windows. One; water. Two; light. Three; open eyes.” “Ah, so that is why the weather is perfect today?” “Exactly. I go to a river or a puddle and look for the other world. It looks like ours but it is a different version of ours. There is one person who always meets me on the other side of the window. Her name is Sue, she looks just like me but is much wiser… Can you follow me?” Up til now I tried to keep my facial expression as neutral as possible but now I can’t help smiling. “So basically our reflections in the water are ‘the smarter ones’?” “No. This is exactly what I mean, we only focus on ourselves! They are not ours, they are themselves, no reflections. On the other side they know that we are ourselves when they look trough the water window and that is exactly why I like them, they are humble and wise. How would you feel if they in the other world would think you are simply a reflection of themselves? I don’t think that is nice.” “No, indeed”. We enter the bar and take the window table, I order a lemonade and coffee. “Where is your notebook?” She asks. “What for?” “To write down the interview obviously.” “Oh. Of course.” I pretend looking for it, but hardly ever take a notebook to my Saturday coffee bar moment. “You can also write on your newspaper.” She adds pleased with herself. I take my pen out and open the first page of the paper. I knew it! They wrote about the same topic! If I had opened it earlier I would never have approached the girl. Okay, lets get this over and done with quickly, I will just write a few words on the side. “So Rose, you have access to all the wisdom in the world. Tell me, who composed the song playing right now.” “Wait here,” she runs out to the channel, simply stands there for a few seconds and returns. “The writer is a man who wants to be loved”, she says. I laugh and say, “That is a vage answer.” “I said I have access to all the ‘wisdom’ of the world. Facts have nothing to do with wisdom.” Little smart ass. “Fair enough, what is love then?” Rose smiles and looks me in the eyes. “Funny, you grownups always ask that question. The answer is different a lot. Sometimes this, sometimes that, it depends on the window. The funny thing is, the world and my school can really bother me sometimes, it makes me really angry and when I am angry I really don’t see any love at all, nowhere. My mom says it is hard to believe in love in this world. But I don’t like that so I look for it in the water windows of wisdom and I always find it again. Just in the way the other world looks and acts. Since their world looks so similar to our world, it makes it easier to love our world again as well. So, to answer your question, I think love can be anything as long as you want it to be there. If you look for the windows you can find it. But you need the three keys especially number three, open eyes, for this question. My grandfather for example rarely has that key, he is always angry.” “That is a very elaborate answer thank you.” I notice I unconsciously wrote down more than I had in mind. “Why do you even want to have all this wisdom Rose?” “I just don’t like the feeling of not knowing something”, she takes a sip of her lemonade. “So the windows in the water make you wise?” Well that is the strange thing, I recently realised I don’t have the right to say it is my wisdom because I see it in their windows. Sue shows me, her world has the wisdom, not me. On the one hand it is sad that I can’t come up with it myself, I would love to be able to say that I came up with something wise that I saw in a puddle but if I would, I’d basically do the same thing that makes me angry about the people in this world, that they only focus on themselves, you see.” I didn’t see that coming, I started covering the article itself with my notes as well. I will just buy a new paper after this conversation. “To me it seems like you yourself are from the world behind the water wisdom windows. You don’t seem very different from how you describe Sue, you have to be very wise to be able to make these observations.” “Well, the coolest thing about my secret is that you can merge with the other wise world and the wise person that you see in the other side of the window.” “How do you do that?” “Come on Becca, I told you tree times already! You only need three keys; water, light and open eyes.” She takes another sip of her lemonade, looks at me with as big smile and asks, “will you publish my secret?” I hear myself answering with solum voice. “Yes Rose, I probably will.” I laugh. “Lets go find your parents.”

#ghent belgium #water refelections #mapping the city

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