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."

a tree of knowledge

Last weekend i was in Holland to present a book to my sister. The book is about my father, in a roundabout sorta way: he and his work inspired an artist, Jeanne Schouten, who made several pieces with his book titles or key words as their names. She had a beautiful exhibition in my hometown, and i kept staring at her piece  'een boom van kennis' (a tree of knowledge):



In the essay, my father describes the moment he became aware of himself as a spectator; he'd just come home from school, and was standing on a little stump of a tree, watching his mother talk to a merchant through a window. "The image in my head, not forced onto me by anyone and not shared with anyone, my inalienable and precarious possession, shows little more than an apparition of my mother and a rim of ginger hair on the skull of the merchant. That is indeed not material for a story and cannot compete in levels of epic with even the scent of a cooky, about which Marcel Proust wrote his masterpiece.

But what is especially connected to it is the look backwards from that unexciting scene to myself and the rickety stump I was standing on, in that moment the navel of the earth, and the realization: i’m standing here, and there behind that window something is visible which I’m looking at now and which I fiercely want not to be a delusion, but evidence of my return home. From that fierce will my me as witness of my own life was born. Suddenly and permanently I couldn’t see anything without seeing at the same time that I saw it and that I was watching it, or: without knowing that I knew and recognizing my knowledge as mine. I saw everything double, there where it was and in my head."

(you can find the whole translation of the essay here: http://cornelisverhoeven.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/a-tree-of-knowledge/ )

I've always been touched by that essay, wondering how a 4 year old boy can be that deep, and when i saw what Jeanne had done with it, how she'd found the right kind of stump, how she'd made it rickety by giving it only three feet, how she incorporated the shine of old metal my father was so fond of, how she used gold and patina to indicate the apparition, i instantly felt a fondness for that piece by her. All of her work is marvelous (check out this great one called 'detour': http://www.jeanneschouten.nl/gaandeweg16.html) but the tree touched me especially.

So i made mention of that during my little stuttering speech. Little did i suspect at the time of writing that speech that Jeanne had remembered how much i enjoyed that piece, and i was enormously surprised when she gave me it as a present when i had done mumbling. It was a scary thing transporting it, but luckily i have the large bags, rigid fins and soft suits that come with freediving, so the tree was protected and now stands where i can see it when i go to bed and wake up, reminding me of that wonder is a matter of perception -you see it when you see it if you realize that it's you seeing it.

where there's smoke tree there's firelight

The Cotinus -or smoke tree- doesn't only have leaves that play with light till your irises twinkle



it also has a flower that's equally dazzlingly misty in color



as it is in black and white

willowy triangle

Egypt

It is a shameful contrast in Egypt between its complex and hideous political situation, and the simple beauty of its land, sea and people

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.

spring colors for ducks

Green crush still going strong, seems to be developing into a preference for willow

though grass and moss are extremely romantic too -especially when you're a duck cruising

the sprinky season

It had been so long, a little more than a year this time, that i had forgotten what a lecherous season spring really is. It's not just the provocative colors telling the winter to fuck off



it's literally fucking, flowers being the genitals of plants. Here's a tree being exhibitionistic



and while scenes like this might seem sweet



flowers and insect actually get together to procreate -which is downright kinky.

So while this Bumblebee is in fact performing an act of florality on the pink bits



right next to it there's a bee air-humping their white cousins



i tought i just liked springtime for the colors, but now i remember why i love it: it's one damn hot orgy. Caligula ain't got nothing on this biatch.

thunderstorm to the rescue

on dykes and foot

Travelled to a dyke -which in Holland can take you anywhere from a second (when you live on one) to a full 10 minutes (when you live in the highlands, i.e. anything marginally above water level). It was a very well-rounded trip, in that i got back again, and the dyke was both new

and old



and where i was only walking, dude to my right was jogging with the enthusiasm of a second week diet



and crazy dog to my left sprinting and leaping with the joy of having a plastic bottle in her mouth



and the reet was dancing



but the navigator of the submarine got fired -no dykes allowed in the navy

that was about Springtime, damnit

My increasingly epic quest for springtime once again led me outside, which is still trecherous, as it looks all sunny, but then feels like someone just ran a glacier through your rectum. But the proof gathered during these insanely dangerous and extreme excursions into the Dutch wilderness warms me in ways no central heating can match -nor a match could match, come to think of it- so it is worth the frostbitten, ehm, nails. Well, very cold hands, anyway.

Here's what i found today. Grass is indeed greener on the other side:

There was a Flock of Seagulls, but i was disappointed with their hair and am not sure if they're a sign of spring



a more definite sign was lambs, who are not all sheepish



and a kangeroo was blowing a raspberry, which they didn't do in the winter

dog was loosing his canine mind over a stick, more so than usual, which seems weather induced



but the ducks weren't seeing eye to eye, so i guess no eggs just yet



In the end, it was up to the flora to proove it. Now there's crocuses (croci?) out, but they're a bit dim, aren't they? They get out first sign of sun and then go all purple from the cold. No, the smart flora know to come out, but still wear a nice warm jacket



i'm such a sucker for pussywillows. Not only because they have a funny name or because they look so good, but also because you can let them glide over your cheeks and get goosebumps from the intense softness. They're right up there with chocolate and boobs on the 'things good in life' list. They even have a lovely depth of field, especially with a deep field in the background



So almost. Almost spring. All that's needed is for this cold to fuck off, and we're there. Till then, coats and hot chocolate. And pussywillows.

sunset dancing with tree

Komodo dragon tree

Went dreaming a couple of weeks ago but couldn't collect the photographic evidence till now. The weirdest thing is that in my dream, too, i only managed to get only detail or blurry shots, no complete pictures.



That is the tip of its tail.

Now i say weirdest, for the creature in my dream was weird too: it was a Komodo dragon the size of a large pony, but covered with those scales. Here's a blurry impression i managed to shoot while still sitting on the balcony over my friend's front door:



It moved rather quick but was not in a hurry. I jumped off the balcony to pursue it and get a decent picture, but it went into a tent in the back garden and i couldn't get my camera to focus. Very frustrating. All i managed was a shot of its paw:



Back to 'weirdest'; dreams are expected to be weird, so when weeks later the reality is similar, that's weirder, even if there was no scaley Komodo dragon in reality. I can sort of trace back where the dream came from, but the scaley thing i took pictures of today is completely unimaginable. I wouldn't be very surprised if it walked by one day, checking for food in a backyard tent -even if it is a tree.

magic

Gods were roughin' it yesterday, so we were in the presence of magic today

Sprinxed

One of the many many things i love about spring is that you can't jinx it, no matter how much you wish for it to come sooner. So if i think i see the signs, and then suddenly we get another shite sleet storm, it doesn't matter (much), for spring is unjinxable, inevitable. Therefore, i see the signs:

1) greener greens:



2) warmer light:

3) bluer skies:



Spring is in the air? Nope, first signs of spring are in colors and light. Once it's hit the air, it's already there.