lessons learned in 2009

Stuff that i hope has made me one year wiser:

1: don't bend over in front of an archer:



2: freedivers cook differently:



which invariably leads to sex:



3: even the people you admire most suck sometimes:



4: details are fun:



5: it's good to have back-up:



6: some fairies are not to be messed with:



7: kids will fart -a lot- even when climbing on you:



and they WILL combine it with stepping into your crotch

8: two nectarines will fit quite comfortably:



9: time your ass-grabs wisely:



10: toiletpaper is not only good within the confines of the bathroom:




11: snow is cold -especially up your crack:



Happy new year, hope you have fun

(photo's by Rahel Zemoi, Karin Barten, Francine Kreiss, Chris Marshal, Peter Boivie and me)

6005

This has been a year in which a lot of thing got turned upside down for me. Let's see where i land next year.



Photo par la fabuleux Francine Kreiss, Gummybear extraordinaire

The darkling thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


~ Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush

F3F

For a lazy freediver who enjoys the sensation of flying fast through water, Formula 3 Freediving has to be about the ultimate sport:

F3F PROMO from Performance Freediving on Vimeo.

Snow

upwards, downwards, everywhere

a white world wrapped

by the singular variety

of the possibilities of atoms

defined as endless

confined by definitions

free to be gravity's prisoner

and wind's lover

falling forever for the land

endlessly urging the sea

always craving the sky

Rockin' the morning 'do

Must have dreamt of Elvis, for when i woke up this morning, my hair was more Rock'n'Roll than i've ever seen it. Usually at that hour, because of the effects of chlorine, half my hair tries to get as far away from my head as possible, while the other half has given up and lies dead. And these halves mix, making for an often inexplicable, sometimes unforgivable mess. Not so this morning



Now the other weird thing about this spontaneous and irreproducible masterpiece is that, though it is very much Rock, it is also very much morning, a combination which seems paradoxical. Rock is a night thing, maybe evening, but mornings are definitely a non-presence. The most Rock'n'Roll thing you can do with mornings is to sleep through them, preferably in the arms of several people, some of whom will have to do quick math when asked for their year of birth. There's no morning rock concerts, no rock breakfast -unless you count tequila.



This 'do went against convention -which in and of itself is very Rock'n'Roll- and shaped itself into something very Elvis-the-Sun-years, before 9 am. Strange. Now if only my musical abilities would one day wake up like this.

Monofin in monochrome

After a videographic exploration i did yesterday of my old love, the monofin Archibalthazar, which was very much unappreciated by Mr. van Reet Pape (who, it has to be said, looks more and more like Pim Fortuyn every day -except then with uncontrolled and furious eyebrows), i was undeterred and took some pictures of it today.

Crap as it is -trying to swim up from 45 meters with this fin was similar to waving a flag behind you to propell you- i still find Archibalthazar a beautiful piece and i might hang it on a wall. It's probably better suited there than in water.

Orca Free

Orca has put out some more info about its freediving specific new suit, the Orca Free



That addition of a seal around the neck looks like a very promising solution to the leakage that has been a problem with this type of wetsuit so far. The price is steep at €469,- but that's pretty sure to drop within a year or if you have good connections. Alternatively, there will be a cheaper freediving specific model as well next year, the Breathe.