frost -still water, just harder. And smaller.

One interesting part of travel is jet lag. It's not just about time difference -i'd say that's only a small part of it. In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition it is described as the time it takes the soul to come back to the body; we travel faster than our souls can on airplanes, and it takes a while for them to reconnect. You sit still for a long time and when you get up again, you're in a different world. It takes time to adjust, time for the soul to travel the same distance the body just has done.

After Vertical Blue, i went from a blue water white beach warm world filled with friends and passion to a grey and cold London filled with hard work. The transition took a week of grump. The two things that helped were my girl, and water. Water, as an element, is endlessly fascinating in all its forms, and even though i was away from its blue deep form, i was surrounded by its frosty form. It beckoned me to go out exploring again, even if i'd been working outside all day and had become quite frosted myself.

It was near the end of the day, and though i was surrounded by monuments





my attention was drawn down



from monuments to moments, almost literally frozen in time







and i saw the cohesion, the link between blue water and frost



which is when my soul returned to me, i reckon

It reminds me of something my father wrote about the element of water: "That water is an element means that man could attribute an endless amount of meanings to it, but only based on the fact, that the water itself is the centre, and not subjected to an ‘egotrip’. It’s not man that makes water, it’s water that makes man and invites him to contemplation. Drifting on water, listening to the waves or with his eyes following the stream he is confronted with something that in force and duration surpasses his own existence and on which he depends."

Demon in my view finder

The mystery, which binds me still, after several days, is why i'm being haunted by monsters. I haven't exactly lost hold of the few mental capacities i have left, nor am i in withdrawl from opiates, but i'm seeing them everywhere, and i can prove it: i've taken pictures. They range from actual monsters

to ghosts under sheets of white water

to the seemingly innocent mad blackbird



who kept staring at me (which is hard for a bird, since they have eyes on the side of their head)

to odd blue cyborg-like eyes in the grass



to that bunny from Donny Darko

It reminds me of a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, called 'Alone':

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.


The mystery which binds me still with this poem, though, is why he'd call it 'alone'; when confronted with a demon, i found the main issue is that you are, in fact, not alone.

temporal detour

So today was time-travel day. Must have been, for i woke up at what i thought was today, but then a few hours later, i find myself in the 70's:



and then there was a bright and shiny leap:



which landed me in a sea of bikes:



It was a little confusing. I got back, or forward, or, well, as present as i can be, again, which is kinda the point:

at the end of a long day, don't we just want to go home?