Column #1

As a result of a night of cinema:
‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ illustrates Picture This. Johnny Depp revels in the spotlights of Stars. Even the cover is quite obviously influenced! But I suppose the most essential result is the fact that my mind once again starts to wander in the most unreasonable directions…
Those were the days! I’m talking about the days of piracy. The days in which you could still experience some excitement. The days in which you could be heroic! Or on the contrary, you could be a scoundrel. Back in the time when you could surprise the world with minor rebellions. Shock people. The era of commandeering vessels, singing pirate shanties and gulping down rum like water seems to have been one big adventure.

Oh yeah, adventures. In the year 2003, what sort of an adventure can one still undertake? The most exciting part of the day is opening your mailbox to see whether you have received mostly junk or mostly newsletters. Excitement equals choosing between two pairs of shoes. Daring to take a rollercoaster ride. Dammit, what *I* want is to sail the seven seas with a bloody three-master! Be a rogue of the ocean! To live under the Jolly Roger! I want to have a nickname that would turn the blood to ice. Jacky, citizen of the state of the Netherlands, is no more! Name-variant on ‘Jack Sparrow’, living where the wind will take her, always looking for the end of the horizon, here I come! I wanna swordfight, load the cannons, read a compass, plunder and maraud! I want to live in the time in which I would not get arrested after some politician has read this column and decides I have an urge towards criminal activities. I wanna be infamous. Discover the wisdom of the waves. Search for treasures. I want mothers to send their children inside at the sight of me. I want fathers to try and protect them with sword of dagger, but of course they wouldn’t stand a chance against a piractical swordmaster such as myself. I want to look as if Hell has spat me back out. I want to use codes like ´parlay´ like I have done nothing else from the moment I was born. I want a crew to sail under my command, all of them tough like hell. I want to use words like ´mates´ and cries like ´aye´. I want that people, years after my existence, will crack open a history book and think, “Jesus, those were the days! I wish I lived in that era…” I want, that due to my actions and life, people would write columns like this one.

//Jacky
Written for: a selfmade magazine