And so it happened, I trashed all of the original zooadventurer – every post I did write, every image I published, every hint of a story, hell, every shared memory… poof, just like that. How come?

Not that long ago I helped my mum moving out. She had to leave behind most of her things so after just a long weekend of sorting out, packing, cleaning and driving up and forth to her new apartment, recycle depot or landfill, the house was empty, besides those random bits here and there that give an abandoned house that sad and lost feeling of times gone forever – a sock, a pieces of paper, a safety pin on the sink, half a bottle of shampoo on the floor.

Still waiting were a dozen (8) cardboard boxes tucked away in the basement. Not mums stuff, but mine, kept in storage since I went for the first of long trips I took this last decade – my huge eighties/nineties album collection, heaps of (note)books, my dark room equipment, the ‘one day I wanna be in a new wave band’ Poly 800 synth and drum machine, random stuff I decided to keep forever cause at the time it defined me and my past. Or so I thought. Although I never really bothered to collect them after I sort of settled down, I found some comfort to know these things were still there, stuffed between concrete (almost nuclear proof) walls, neatly covered under a dusty white blanket like an old misty memory. I knew it was there waiting till the day I felt the need for reunification. And today, I realized, was the very last of those imaginary pickup days. I had to act.

But I didn’t feel like it.

For whatever good reason I did keep all those ‘essentials’ years ago, in the years that followed, I had outgrown that person and his belongings. Standing there in the strip light, watching those boxes, I couldn’t relate to it anymore – worse, I just wanted it out of my sight, burned or churned, whatever. Just gone.

Emptying the basement with unknown determination I salvaged (Wall-E like) just a couple of things: a thumbed paperback, The Asiatics by Frederic Prokosch; my teenangst diaries; a tenner (pre-Euro, because dutch money was a piece of art) I found between some broken kitchenware, a button saying ‘Hug Me’. The rest I threw away instantly or was sold within a week at the dutch equivalent of Graiglist. My album collection made somebody very happy when I said, have fun, for free.

So what has this sentimental story to do with trashing the late Zooadventurer? Maybe nothing. Perhaps I entered that episode of life you can’t help thinking: ‘Is this it? Is this all?’ Maybe I just like to burn bridges for all you know. To start some new, just for the sake of it. So ok, this is the deal. Grab yourself a feed if you’re just a curious as me for the answers. And no, no grudges if you just continue ignoring me. Really.

Ps. This is not a travel blog pur sang, merely an account of my little private journey(s). And yes, all pictures will be mine, that’s a fact.