We are in a house that has a very difficult passage. You had to wring yourself through a very narrow part near the stairwell. We are in Holland at the wedding of my best friends. I sit at the head table next to the groom's mother and across from his father. Across from me there is a black woman. First there is a needle sticking out of her skin. Then I feel a needle stick out of my skin as well. Some- thing further sticks out under the eye. A kind of jack, of the game of jacks. Then I take a jack out of my mouth. It is one with four sides. More and more jacks come out of my mouth. It is happening to the black woman as well. In the beginning the groom's parents are amused. But then they begin to find it awful. They say, "Robbie, this is crazy, this is going too far. You can't do this. This is ridiculous. Terrible." They get up. I run away from the table and go somewhere. I see the bride. She is upstairs. Now there are no longer jacks in my mouth. She is dressed beautifully. She is wearing a gown of old silk. It shines beautifully. It has a light ivory color. It also looks a little like taffeta. I bow to her and she laughs. She is surrounded by all of her bridesmaids. Then I find a map. A very ancient map. I am now someone else. A blond fellow student with a classical Latin surname, whose father had been an ambassador with a home on a Greek island. I/he find(s) the map. There is a drawing in it. And the drawing has a square with an X inside, an onion-shaped dome on top. The whole picture reminds me of an hourglass. He walks with this drawing through many adventures. Many things happen that he has to get through. And in the end he comes back to the wedding with the scroll under his arm--he has been able to hold on to the scroll through all his trials and tribulations. But it is all over now. He is terribly ashamed for all the mess he has made there. The long tables are empty and the chairs lean against them. It is really a feeling of after-the-great-party, which he has missed entirely. Then he goes over to the river and sits on the grass. Suddenly he sees to his left, on the riverbank, a building. The building is exactly, but exactly, the drawing he has carried with him through all these trials and adventures (as I write this down I have intense goose bumps). It reads on it in Dutch: "Dit is bet on twerp van de wereld." ('This is the design/blueprint of the world.") He looks at it and I stand next to him. He sees it and it is fantastic to behold. And then it immediately becomes very old. It disappears, entirely decayed, out of this world. It looks like the whole building is driving off, it goes away. I tell him: "I have enormous respect for you that you have done all this! Because it really was there. You held on to the image. Because you did it like you did, you've been able to hold on to the image. The image was really present. The building has truly existed. Nobody knows it but you. You've kept the image. You know it. And I don't believe that I'd have ever been able to do so. I already got scared when things went wrong at the table with the jacks in my mouth next to the parents. I already found that a terrifying experience." The building had been made of wood; old wood. It was a geometrical form. At first when it was new, it was very beautiful. And then it very quickly became old. Be- cause it was all long, long ago. A certain game was played before the wedding. Someone went through a certain transformation all the time. Because suddenly I saw him sit somewhere as a dressed-up animal. Something to do with an elephant. The game had to do with the notion that everything had meaning and everything was meaningful to a ridiculous degree. I am amazed that he kept it all going. That he actually kept going so he would finally see the building. The Entwurf. It was like a mill where grain was pounded. Very ancient; very, very ancient.