Foreword:

“And he never again did! Talk to me. Stopped in 2001, after 5000+ pages over a period of 3½ years worth, just like fucking that… Why, hi there! Between 1998 and 2001 Benne got lost in an internal dialogue, writing 10 pages per day, every day aboard the Ferry where he worked at the time. To be able to do so he, somehow, came up with me: Erik. Erik Ergo. Nice to meet you, I’m sure.

He’s finally done fondling it! And if anything, he hopes we pieced together a result that does justice to what stuck with him the most after reworking/translating a selection (500+ pages) into the volume in front of you? For example the amount of energy committed to just about anything he set his mind to at the time, how we drove each other onward, relentlessly, and often made things so much harder than needed or healthy in the process. But in hindsight, talk is cheap. Even a shit load of it. We talked ourselves into some unnecessary and often easily avoidable frenzies and he himself into a serious mental breakdown by the end of us, at his aunt and uncle’s spiritual bed & breakfast in the French Pyrenees. But boy oh boys, we sure were alive!

For the rhythm, getting more than lost in The Process, stumbling in, and out, and back into love, one overarching, unattainable (duh!) French love interest, friends and family, and yes, for the sex, those fucking drugs and an emerging career as a poet.

You don’t have to like us from back then, or even sympathize. Wholesome we were most certainly not, nor always in tune with the blistering heat we must have radiated. For those negatively affected, sorry about that…? We tried so, so hard. Being unbearably young and much, much too beautiful.

It was a trip. 29 trips a day, every work day, to be accurate. In your face, unapologetically hardcore and yet, at the same time, completely vulnerable. Imperial, butt naked Odysseys across some Dutch river. With, after all these years, this unique ego/slice of life and Zeitgeist document to show for it. A love story like no other we know of. So, if nothing else we guess there’s that, at least?”