November outcome -the remains of orange

So now that i've been cured of November-dread by embracing grey, what will happen to orange, you might think?

Don't worry, it's in good hands

colors of the Ardennes

My quest for beating the November greys brought me to the Ardennes last week, where i feared to see autumn at its most ruthless -but that turns out to be quite pretty



and surprisingly, despite cold and mist, there was still lots of green



the most spectacular forms of green coming from the much loved moss, which was everywhere, from hanging on trees



to just hanging



to taking over entire hills



The house we were staying in was mostly about red





which was very warm and comfortable



But what struck me was that i grew to quite like some of the greys over time







Grey can be very impressive



Maybe i'll concentrate next month on December's contrasts and focus on black and white, for maybe the cure for grey is to love it -the lovely part in this picture i think is the grey mist

November cure III: finding orange

When skies are this grey around sundown



you have to look down the tree



on the ground to find the remains of orange



So orange seems to go descent around this time of year, but into what? The ground, a very deep lake, madness/depression? Mysterious color, orange.

November cure part II

So i'm shooting orange



by orange light



to combat November dreariness, when all of a sudden, we get 10 minutes of lovely light



There's no better cure than not needing the cure.

November cure

Screw November, i'm gonna o.d. on orange

November waits

Undoubtedly, there's beauty to November. The ever increasing contrast, for example, between the stripped wet branches and increasingly cold grey sky, can be quite startling, and as such quite pretty. But god does this weather suck, and man, does the constant grey affect my mood. It's time for either snow or sun, not this, what they call in Shadowland, 'waiting room of a world'.

light on crystal

My friend Maria finds crystals. I find that almost as wondrous as the crystals themselves.

set fire to the third bar

the 8 that is a 10

October is a bit of a mad month, innit? It can combine the gentlest and warmest of light with the fattest and coldest of rains




or that very same lovely light with goddamn hail



and even the saddest little tree can shine in this light and its reflection



while the gloriously big ones can blush beautifully at the thought of their impending nudity



The whole experience of october, not just that light fantastic or the crazy precipitation, but the air and the smell and the moodiness of it all, i think warrants at least a temple



where melancholy angels ponder whether hail is actually damned -and light sent- by god



or that it is just the stuff all these freaky spiders that crowd this month pull out of their arses

drops of blue

Cornelis Verhoeven, Symboliek van de voet, 19 oktober 1956

54 years ago today my father promoted on his thesis 'Symbolism of the foot'. Though he rarely did anything special on his birthday, october 19th was a day he always made sure to celebrate with friends or us. He was quite proud of that book, and also of the speed with which he'd promoted, proving to his father and the rest of the world he was no slouch -though no one thought this of him, the guilt of being allowed to study instead of working on the farm like the rest of the family stayed with my father all of his life. To have a book proving your hard work and acknowledging your efforts worthwhile (he promoted cum laude) must have been a big relief for him.

He describes how he came up with the idea of the book as follows; he had written three essays of together more than 300 pages, the third and most lyrical being the one for history of religion, called 'symbolism of the foot':

"The idea for which i'd come up with a few years earlier, walking in the street behind a girl who had something devine in her movements and who also in other ways highly fascinated and confused me. I was surprised that the asphalt under her feet remained indifferent, that it wouldn't wave under the clatter of her sandals, and that no flowers sprouted forth from it, such as it happens in mythology when a goddess approaches and strides past. Of course i fell in love with this goddess, followed her ways and found her address, but my careful and shy advances were not appreciated. And with the first surly glance i had already set for the horizon. Maybe she dreamt of a young god in a red sports car  who would take her with him to the full life on beaches far away. As far as i know he never appeared. I myself started to suspect that also in amorous ways i was not born for a grand and thrilling life. But my enthusiasm about the idea of a carpet of flowers underneath the feet of a goddess did not suffer from it; it had in the mean time gained its own meaning and undisturbedly followed its own dynamic. A bit of a broken heart is also intellectually interesting."

From 'De glans van oud ijzer' ('The shine of old iron'), Cornelis Verhoeven.



First fruits of his intellect dedicated to the author's father