Gert-Jan Theunisse Page
Soo La Sen
Book 1 of The Living Dead Don't Get a Holiday

Gert-Jan is a very hard boy to describe. The following is an email sent to me earlier in 1998...

Ooh,

I can't deal with the world at all, ever. Sometimes it just gets too intense for me. I feel as if can't get a grip. It slides away from me and I end up in tears.

I am a man without a home, so naturally I live in France. It is the only place in the world where I am capable of attaining a state of lasting sanity. How did I happen to be born in this great country? I don't know. I guess I was just lucky.

My father was a Dutchman, and as straight as an arrow. He worked for the World Bank and never took acid or mushrooms. Still, he made enough money for most luxuries. He sent me to boarding school in England to get cultured and I did. I smoked hash and popped pills with the DJ's and let the gay ones kiss me. I felt like Saint Rimbaud himself was watching over me from heaven.

My dad hated rave and thought everything good was bad. My mother was an artist born in Grenoble. They fell in love in Paris, and there I was conceived. Many people said they were opposites and that this romance could not last. But it did and it brought me here to this sad place where I now dwell until I, like my parents, die.

I cannot comprehend America, but I like the expatriates well enough. Most Americans possess a paradoxical blend of blind innocence and raw violence that I find intriguing. America is a hard country to leave if you're a native because of all the convenience and whatnot. When I first used a garbage disposal and a trash compactor I thought it was the epitome of bourgeois idealism. I loved it. It made me hard, the garbage disposal. But I will not subscribe to anti-youth fascist laws in order to appease my sense of efficiency. It all seemed too German to me, America. They won't even let you drink a pint piss until you've got one foot in the bloody grave!

My best mate, Victor, is from one of the most dismal places on Earth and he turned out alright, which proves that flowers grow very well in the shit. There! I have justified existence. The purpose of the whole damn world is to bring a few beautiful flowers into existence.

I don't want to sound negative. I dig a lot of things in life: music and nudity and mushrooms and ecstasy and marijuana and cocaine and speed and alcohol and heroin and exercise and fresh air and bicycling and camping and other healthy things. The trick to life is balance. It's just like riding a bike, really. If you race too hard you will burn out. If you lean too far into the turns you will crash. If you sit up and chat with your neighbors, smile, and maybe eat a banana every now and again, you will fall less often and enjoy yourself and stay healthy.

It's not a bad thing to dream despite the myth. One person CAN enact substantial changes in a culture. I seek to do just that. It is not fair that greedy people end up owning most of the world. Greedy people can never be happy, ever. That is why they are greedy to begin with.

I have been with a lot of chicks, but I cannot imagine ever being married to a single one. I need the variety and change. Without it the world seems to singular, too confined. I also need stimulus to take me outside the realm of everyday thought. I know my limits because I've exceeded them before. I love Donna though. Even if she were mangled in an automobile accident and covered with blood, I would still feel like a black stallion riding her to orgasm.

I am not a normal guy, me. I got troubles, you see. I am something of a seer or a prophet. I don't want to be, mind you, I just am. I can see the future sometimes. It's true what they say about the future, that it is uncertain.

My visions of the future are not all clear but they are all possible outcomes. I envision a merging of the two species, man and tree sloth. This new creature would allow the possibility of limitless spiritual growth and relaxation. Somehow the remorse I feel over these visions is enough to make me want to drown in my own self-loathing. It is true that sometimes I need pills to make me feel better.

Humans can pretend to relax and reach meditational highs, but theses states are ephemeral due to humanity's instinctual response to destroy what he has just created. Humans are not all fascist, but they are so individualistic and artsy. Even a bloodthirsty General is an artist in a perverted way. Humans need independence and room. They cannot be satisfied with the here and now. It is too underwhelming for them.

Sloths love to contemplate the nature of the universe and do so with alacrity but they are unmotivated to change and slow to adapt the whims of the universe. There are millions of sloths but billions of humans. Most members of both species live dead, asleep even while awake. Confusing. There are still a few notable exceptions.

Ooh the Sloth comes to me in my dreams and tells me of a place outside time called Soo La Sen, a place you can only enter through portals in time scattered throughout the Earth. Most now are unfortunately underwater. Sloths are famously good swimmers despite their inability to get around on dry land. They lack the necessary instinctual drive get mobile.