Nobody stays forever buitenlander, even in Zoersel

First flakes of snow, the green of nature tucked away, coffee grounds on a ruffled note, Robert Frost's words subsiding to words and no embraces of fire. What's there so special about an hour, a day, a lifetime in a place like Zoersel.
What is there special to you they asked me,the buitenlander.
On a day in the spring there will be "The Global Fiesta" they said.
and one theme will be a photo exhibition showing what is special about Zoersel in the eyes of buitenlanders/wat niet-Belgen special vinden aan onze gemeente?
Wherever I lived I thought the place was special, bijzonder, as they say.
To me all the daily motions of life are precious as life itself. There are the simplest of things that are the most special. Het is De Gewon dingen dat zijn de meeste bijzonder
Zoersel is a hideaway where time runs on a zen schedule in a setting of mysterious beauty.

When I first came here, I went to walk in the woods and the leafy paths made me think that if things become unbearable into their quiet I can come, there, trying to hold Rusty's unrest, I knew that the place, the gloom of the trees, the edge of a clearing, the water running in a ditch, all looked like a rendering of Robert Frost's poetry. It was then that I felt brave enough to take in the learning of a new and difficult language and to settle into the uncanny feeling of an apparently unwelcoming place.
I wandered further in the woods and came upon the Boshuisje, where I could read on a plate that it was the setting of Hendrick Conscience's "De Loteling" and though I'd never read a line of him I knew him as the towering figure in the middle of the namesake quiet plaza in Antwerp and the one who put the Flemish language on the map of novels. To me the little house and its bistro looked like the kind of place the Grimm Brothers would stop to drink a beer and discuss their next sprookje.
On the way back that day, I got lost and the little numbered plates on the trees were no help at all as they obstinately pointed out, from everywhere to the same direction: Boshuisje. Fortunately the late summer light lingered long enough for me to come out of the woods before the nightfall.
On the first day of our moving, while opening frantically the boxes to settle in for the night, our very first day "home" after two months of hotel living, we suddenly realized, along with noticing Rusty's absence, that a commotion was going on in the street. Both my children, Lou-Davina and Leonardo, run out and almost immediately jumped back in, livid. The neighbour across the street was about to kill Rusty. As I made a dash outside, I saw the man brandishing a spade and running after the mischievous dog. The second he set his eyes on me he came forward directing the threat of the spade to me while yelling in a funny French "C'est votrrrre chien çà, je vais la touer hein!" I turned my back to him caught the repenting dog's collar and got in closing the entrance door. So much so for a sprookje life style! Where were the welcoming committees of yesteryear? Catherine's moving day lasagna, Gevik turning bare spaces into full furnished home, leaving hot croissants by the door, Frank arriving medical kit in one hand, to rescue Leonardo from a ravaging virus and 'Boston Chicken' meal in another hand to save the day. Here in Zoersel, the wish of a welcoming committee became true the very same night Rusty escaped narrowly the knock of the spade. At 9PM two friendly police officers rang our bell and courteously made it clear that the spade equipped neighbour complained about our "dangerous" dog running loose. They were sorry to bother us so late in the evening but they couldn't help and had to file a report. They played with Rusty, chatted a bit with the kids, suggested that Rusty, while outside, be permanently kept on a leash and left wishing us a nice stay in Zoersel.
I guess, in the begining, being in Zoersel felt like playing gooseberry!
Time passed and one day I ventured out in the prairie across our street the Gagelhoflaan, literally the Myrtle Garden, and stepped in Charles and Dinora's garden. Theirs is a single house surrounded by corm fields, and in autumn's late afternoons, the mist lingers just above the ground, making their place look like seating on the clouds. Charles guided me through his Art gallery, the paintings, the sculptures, curious metallic structures, I attended a while his drawing workshop where we had always the same model, a beautiful thin girl, with not much flesh on to draw great curved lines, rather befitted for miniature painting. There was always a cheerful atmosphere there, and I met my dear friend Wies, the water colorist, who always took time to explain the jokes being told so that I could take part in the laughter though not at a synchronized time. A short time after Charles stopped teaching but we stayed in touch through their Art Group, De Artfanner. going sometimes to exhibits, or taking short trips.
My Flemish is still a work in progress but the circle of nice people is widening. Wies and I are carpooling to our drawing workshops, attending together Yohan Truyen's animal drawing and watercoloring. Or going to see Yohan's beautiful, sober drawings exhibited in the Oude Sint-Martinuspastorij.
Nowadays, my daughter left to attend university in Middelburg, she and Francis, my husband were forever nagging about missing out on the urban life...but my son and I just love this place. He rides his Brommer or his bike through the streets and the woods to get to his friends houses or to fuifjes (DJ parties) I love the quiet and the zen mood floating on the whole place, so tucked away from the tumults of our world and giving me a sense of balance and concentration to read, to write and to translate. From time to time I go on short trips, to Brussels or Paris, and coming back I feel that Zoersel is now home to me, that the language is opening up, showing its beauty, its possibilities, through the patient teaching of Lieve Amssoms. Somehow it's our state of mind and our own will that makes any place bijzonder and the people and their warmth, which is all the same in the whole world. As an Armenian born in Isfahan, Iran, and living in Zoersel, Belgium, I feel that at the core of one's existence is a personal identity that can embrace and blend in anywhere, and that everywhere the air is infected with human possibilities, in which change is a constant part of it, and the mind moves everywhere, along the past's rememberings and beyond today's blended cultures, in which keeping alive the vernacular languages such as Armenian or Flemish is like hugging the solid trunk of the trees, to stay rooted while admiring the delicacy of the ever changing leaves of tomorrows.
Flora