what the shoe dragged in

Damn-delion

Yes, more dandelion pictures, even though every other picture taken this week seems to be of these fuzzballs. But you know, they're really fun to photograph, because of their roundness

the way they play with light,



and their texture,

Plus they're a good excuse to lay down in the grass.

light

narrow doored

Ever since the local Weight watchers clinic put in these new doors, attendance has gone down

golden

red diagonal blue bug

Cornelis Verhoeven interview on Belgium TV

An interview from 1981 about Seneca. The bit with dad starts after 5 minutes.
The backstory to this interview is that in the early 80's, my father was going through a rough period in his life. He was getting divorced and found himself without ideas to write about. He later said that not having any ideas yourself is no excuse to close yourself off from the ideas of others, which is one of the reasons why he started translating -mainly Seneca. These translations are probably the reason why he was invited to talk about Seneca.

sparkly velvet

what to do with fountains

Well, you could photograph them





or use them as the backdrop of your photo



or put an ashtray on them to see what happens

Fountain ended up kickin' ashtray ass so hard ashtray had ass handed on tray afterwards.

lilac in the dark

on the solidity of rock

Though i do have a stone floor and its temperature and texture do annoy me, i am in general a fan of the material -just not as in-house floor covering. I think an aspect of it is under-represented in language, though, in expressions like 'stone cold' and 'rock hard'. I mean, yes, if you're gonna hit the road

it's obviously gonna hit back, but the point is

that it depends on the arrangement and placement of the stones. They can be uninviting to the touch



yet in the same light seem soft, and even quite sexy

But in the end, whether they be warm or cold, hard or soft, they are part of what protects us from further harshness and cold, part of our foundation. That part is expressed in our language only by this: it's rock solid.



But rock rocks, it should have a verb... wait. Ehm, right. Well, rock on, then.

give the mould a break

Though i strongly suspect there are moulds for nature

i do more strongly suspect those moulds are there only for nature to break them

drifting

Shot with cellphone yesterday in Rotterdam, while waiting for the bus. Ever since seeing that scene in American Beauty, i was hoping to be able to shoot something like it. Missed the bus because of it.

Music is 'Spiegel im Spiegel', by Arvo Pärt.

"And this bag was just... dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever."

~ American Beauty, script by Alan Ball

shine on you crazy Rotterdam

Was in Rotterdam yesterday. A very long time ago, for a very short time, i used to live there, but i didn't remember it being this shiney

it was actually extremely shiney

even the work being done there was shiney



but the brightest shining star i found yesterday was the man waving goodbye to his girl in the shiney train, who kept waving till long after the point where his girl could possibly still see him

Digital Single Lens Reflections

Through the mirror of my mind, last night must have been a reflective evening, if i look at the photo's i took. Or wait, when it's outside reflections you notice afterwards, are you then only reflective post-reflection? For where i was aware of shooting reflections, i hadn't reflected the theme was reflection, so i wasn't reflective of reflection, and certainly didn't reflect on current reflection on the nature of reflectiveness, be it literal of figurative.

So i wasn't reflective, but the pictures were, and in retroflect, this makes me reflective?

the petal position

You know how yawning is contagious? It might just be that confusion is too. Case in point is spring: i think the weather is confused, which is usual in Holland, but it looks like that confuses the flora as well. The green obviously responds well to all this variation of warm sun and cold rain

But this poor set of leaves unfolding seemed to think it was both a rose and turning fall already

Makes me wonder about the relationship between leaves and petals; do you think there's envy there? Mutual admiration? There has to be a really butch petal out there somewhere, wishing it were a leaf, if there's leaves like this trying to be petal-ish. The confusion continues.

WORLD RECORD!!! Constant Apple No Fins

After months of preparation in secret, eating literally dozens of apples and swimming at least several hundreds of meters, finally on March 28th 2010 i was ready to attempt a new world record, Constant Apple No Fins (CANF).

This discipline is considered the most extreme in freediving, since it involves not only unnaturally long deep dives, but also the mandatory taking a bite from the apple at depth, which can seriously mess you up when executed incorrect.

The previous record was held by William Tell of Switzerland, who made it all the way to the bottom of his pool in his hometown of Apfel-am-Kopf, 3 and a half meters deep. But that record was wrought with controversy, famous not for its pure athletic achievement but mostly for its near-fatality and allegations of the apple being weighed down. So in order to do this, i needed to do it right and beyond the shadow of a doubt -deeper and cleaner.

Therefore, all my orifices were checked on a regular basis leading up to the event -even the extra ones most people don't have- my blood, urine, mucus and hair were sampled and studied both before and after, the apple was picked by an independent Chillian notary official (who had no knowledge of its use) an hour before the attempt, and the pool was measured by 14 seperate judges.

Here's the result:



Notice how the CANF surface protocol differs from lesser disciplines: one has to say "That's disgusting." And it really is. Apple and chlorinated water don't really mix into something palatable.

For outdoor events, should someone be crazy enough to attempt one, i think Granny Smith's tanginess should compensate the salt in a sea event, and in sweet water, the bite of a Coe's Golden Drop might work well.

In my opinion, it should theoratically be possible to go deeper than 8 meters, and i might try, but this attempt and the media frenzy surrounding it has taken a lot out of me. The groupies have too -literally. As always with my records, though, i seek no personal gain, but merely to show the wonders of what the human body is capable of. And in this case, what apples are capable of, too.