The word crumpling is derived from the verb to ‘ crumple ’.
A crumpling is a condensed space within your hands. Once you crumple a paper, space and reality are sucked in ( they are sucked in in very different ways; with different angles and forces). At this very moment, in which space and reality are condensed, a story is born. Every crumpling in the world contains therefore the possibility of a story.

1. Dummies

‘Yes, I'm certain that all children who didn't have dummies when they were small, started smoking when they grew older.'
‘0f course not, dummies only exist because of a baby’s sucking reflex!'
‘That's right, that's why you should satisfy that urge sufficiently for a length of time, otherwise they take to cigarettes later on. I notice it with everyone around me. I'm greatly in favour of dummies. I've always tried to give all of you dummies, two around your neck and one in your mouth. With Rik and Voeb it 's worked very well; you notice they don't smoke.'
‘And what about Pieks? she didn't want a dummy when she was small, did she? and she doesn't smoke now either.'
Yes, but she was the first, and anyway she sucked on her two middle fingers, You see, Jos and Vik, both smoke like chimneys now and they never wanted dummies when they were small.'

2. Herring without bones

Once a friend told me he sat at a small round table on a terrace. On the table stood a plate and on the plate lay a herring. The herring had been cut length-wise and lay spread open on the plate.
The two silver-pink halves were surrounded by slices of dark-green gherkin and a leaf of light-green lettuce.
The divided herring lay more or less vertically on the plate.
To the friend's left sat a close girlfriend of his who within a few hours was to travel to Paris.
To his right sat another girlfriend who was in bad need of a holiday and was scheduled to catch the night train to Switzerland that same evening.
Both were very close girlfriends of his. Probably the best he had.
They sat and talked for about three quarters of an hour. Then they departed one after another leaving him alone, with his herring in front of him. He wondered why a herring has no bones.

3. We ride

The three of us are riding on a moped. I am sitting squashed between two Thais, a girl and a boy. They are eager to show me a resort with hot springs. The journey is rather long and uncomfortable. This is because nearly all the roads in North-Thailand are just sand. They often contain large pot-holes. The bumps make me bounce up and down on the moped. Landing sometimes hurts, I can't keep an eye on the pot-holes and watch the landscape at the same time. I see a jumping landscape.
On arrival there is a strong smell of rotten eggs. In an endlessly undulating field you can see geysers spouting hot water. As you walk by you feel drops on your face. The grass is bright green with paths leading through it. At countless places underground there are large warm water bubbles. The water is sweet and contains different minerals. People come here to take a bath in a small building further along.
My parents told me that they used to take the moped and ride for hours over cobblestones. In this way they tried to detach the fertilized egg cell. In those days there was very little contraception. They also recalled how they had purchased two very expensive bottles of thick, dark-red juice from a quack in The Hague. The bottles, that were sold in a disreputable shop near the red-light district, cost forty guilders each. The concoction smelt of sulphur. You had to drink a whole bottle in one go and then wait.

4. Cramp

He's blond and heavily-built. His skin is burnt red by the sun.
When on holiday he tries to adapt entirely to the customs of the country where he is staying.
At six o'clock in the morning when the sun rises, they eat.
They sit in a circle on the ground round a table cloth; breakfast consists of numerous bowls filled with sauces, vegetables and rice. The Thai family squat and dexterously reach for the food with their hands. But he does his utmost to sit cross-legged, clasping his long legs and to eat with both hands. Even so he usually needs one hand to support himself. He smiles a lot. Then, suddenly with a scream, he straightens his leg over the middle of the table.

5. Next-door neighbour

Every morning my next-door neighbour eats five lemons on an empty stomach. Around ten-thirty he starts to smoke strong tobacco. Due to exhaust fumes and conversations with people in the city, he prefers to reside in the woods near Venlo. His twenty year old Volkswagen van in which he sleeps and lives is parked just across the border in Germany. A while ago he came here to give us instructions on what to say if a social security inspector came round to check up on him.
'You don't know me, you don't know my name, you don't know what I look like either, you don't know anything good or bad about me, you know nothing at all!'

6. There is beautiful man

There is a beautiful man who lives not far from here.
He has a certain quality that you barely notice, and of which he himself is hardly aware. His protruding limbs grow very slowly while the rest of his body remains the same or even shrinks a little as it grows older.
He has quite large hands and feet, his ears are also larger than average. With regard to his big nose, slightly buiging eyes and extremely wide mouth, you might say he has an over-expressive face.
He's very active in the art world. He regularly goes to exhibitions, makes things himself and writes a lot about art.
Sometimes he's invited by the art world to give a lecture because he 's such a good speaker. He has a dark, deep voice and talks very slowly. When he was here on a visit once, I already found him to have a very expressive face; it was also remarkable how well he listened.

7. I walk

I walk through two villages that have become intertwined. It is quiet. Occasionally the silence is broken by the noise of a speeding car. As the car passes me, I hear the dull, loud beat of house music. The majority of the people living here are elderly farmers. They stay indoors because of their high blood pressure. The village doctor prescribes all sorts of pills to help combat this high blood pressure. At the doctor's expense, all of the elderly have been lent a blood pressure meter. Every morning they are obliged to measure their own blood pressure; if it rises above twenty, danger threatens. Most of them also take a daily dose of children's aspirins in order to dilute their blood.

8. Slightly touched

I used to know his grandmother, she was an orphan. She was raised in orphanages and as a young girl she was later adopted by the head mistress of a domestic science school. This grandmother had obviously been whacked by the sail of a windmill.
Her three children, who I know well, have also had a knock from a windmill. And their children, twelve in all, are just slightly touched.

9. Her mother

Her mother was operated on last week. Due to metastasis they had to remove the following: a portion of her stomach, a piece of her gall bladder, some lymph glands and a section of her liver. All of these being organs that lie more or less next to each other. In the case of his mother however, everything grew inwards. She had not suffered any matastasis whatsoever. When they examined her prior to the operation they were startled to find a ball the size of a child's head in her stomach.