Alchemy BY LUC LEESTEMAKER L O O K I NG AT T H E ride that is my life so far, I've come to rec-
ognize that the key to my so-called “self-realization” stems from my willingness to say, “I don't know, but let's find out” at the beginning of a conversation, almost as a disclaimer. It's amazing how much more enjoyable life becomes with that simple acknowledgment. The declaration immediately makes you more of a partner than a competitor. With a simple “I don't know… let's find out!”, life becomes open again, creative and adventurous, full of options and possibilities. What greater gift could a parent offer a child? This awareness has brought both tranquility and clarity into my life, but it is a fairly recent discovery for me. For a long time, I had no sense of direction. I could only count on a dogged determination to get myself to a better place, though I had no idea what that place was or how I would get there. Having grown up within the strictures of a Calvinist society, I found myself rebelling at the age of 18 by experimenting with of drugs, squatting on government-owned property, and making intense abstract paintings with a found pot of black house paint applied to the backs of wallpaper rolls. I made my living by cashing in a weekly check from the government-all the while vehemently decrying “the system”-and by buying and selling old carpets and leather coats at f lea markets. Even if it had been brought to my attention at the time, I would not have admitted that I too was following a long mercantile tradition with these activities-an almost inherent part of the Dutch trader's makeup. Nor was it the first time I practiced firsthand the laws of supply and demand. That exercise began at age eight, when I started going around the neighborhood collecting old newspapers in a box strapped to the back of my bicycle. I claimed the cellar under our house as my territory, and deposited the papers there. If
anyone bothered to ask me what I would do with these papers, I told them it was for a good cause. In the evenings, I rolled around in the growing mountain of paper and thought of the fortune I was creating. After a number of weeks, my father called a company from the yellow pages to collect the paper, and I received the generous sum of 20 gulden ($5) for the massive pile. I remember well the pride I felt in my ingenuity and industriousness in those pre-recycling days. I also recall the awe I felt watching an idea plus manual labor transform alchemically into money, which in turn allowed me to spend that “energy” any way I wanted. In the years to come I would repeat that exercise over and over, in different circumstances and with different tools. After sporadic attempts at schooling with mostly mediocre results, I started getting the distinct feeling I was little more than a small cog in a large wheel that had nothing to do with me. One day, sitting inmy high school classroom with a dated geography book about Athens, I looked out the window and saw a young mother walking on the grass with her newborn. The beauty of the moment and my sense of confinement caused a serious panic attack. I ran out of the building, never to return. Soon after, I spent some time driving old cars down to Athens, where I would sell them on Syntagma Square. I would use the money to buy myself a few weeks in the cradle of western civilization, inspecting real life firsthand as I drank retsina amidst the ruins of the Acropolis with the local dropouts and other wanderers. When I f inally ran out of money, I returned to Holland with a one-way Magic Bus ticket. Back home, I settled into a life that, despite all my earlier attempts at sabotage, was geared toward full compliance with the once-
23