P.P.S.

P.P.S. The truth is that I can live without you. But ... but I don't want to :)

Pleasant Surprise

Just finished Steve Jobs' 'De Biografie'. I cried a couple of times. More exact: finished the second half of the book. I started reading right after the pictures. Friday evening this book was lent to me from one of the colleagues of my history club. I borrowed it. I did not want to buy it - I can't really tell why.

It's "always" the same story! I start with one fresh, new book and two weeks later I'm reading three, four or more books at the same time. I am so used to my own habit that I am no longer surprised. In a way it's my way of not getting bored and locked in one book. It's my way to follow my own curiosity and not get frozen.

Two weeks (and a few days) ago I started reading with Ileen Montijn's 'Hoog Geboren' book in Dutch about the nobility of my country of the last 250 years. When I went to Amsterdam in the train, I started reading Athanius van Alexandrië's 'Verleidingen in de woestijn. Het leven van de heilige Antonius'. I wanted a thin and light book that fitted in my bag. It's a biography on Anthony the Great (circa 251-356) and since Friday evening I'm reading about Steve Jobs.

I guess tonight I'll start reading the first part of Jobs' book. But maybe the postman will bring something more urgent. It can be the wind. A song. A quote on the radio. Some image. A memory. Or ... that gives an impulse to read something else. 

Surprised?

P.S. In the end I finish reading "all" the books I once started. Exceptions: two or three books.

Aquele Beijo

Aren't we - inside our head - filled up with pictures, films, sentences, colours and smells? Of travels, books, lovers, people we met or things that impressed our senses? Every now and then one pops-up. For me, most of the time, by surprise.

Saturday evening I was in Amsterdam. Cristina Branco gave a concert in the 'Concertgebouw'. I loved to see her singing. Her face. The shape of her body. To hear her songs sung live, which are so familiar to me. Most of them were from her new album 'Fado Tango'. She was in control. Sang professionally. In a way it was too perfect. No mistakes. I guess I missed "real" emotion.

I loved 'Áqua e Mel' best.

I was not allowed to take pictures during the show. After the show I saw her, on my way back to the hotel, by accident, at the back of the Concertgebouw. At a distance of 3 meters.  I looked at her. She looked at me. I did not say anything. I did not take a picture. I simply nodded my head and smiled.

In the years to come every now and then pieces of Cristina's show will pop-up. Just like so many things: big and small, old and new, important or not, connected to you or not, intense or superficial. Just like 'that kiss'. Ours!

Wondering

It took me less than two hours to walk from Mas Pinell to the small town Torroella de Montgrí (Spain). I started walking around 7am in the morning. Taking care that I would be back before the sun would become too hot. 

Alone. Water. Bread. Toilet roll. Mobile phone. Camera. And a cap! I have required one since 2 years ago ... if not, my head would get burned :(

From the town up to the Castell del Montgrí took me almost 1 hour (or was it less?). Steep hill. No road. Only a small donkey path. I was pretty tired when I entered the Castle that was built between 1294 and 1301. The view was worth the sweat. What a view!

Most castles in Europe are empty skeletons. But the story of this castle is even more strange. It's a castle that  never was completed. No-one knows why. Out of money? Changed political and/ or military alliances? Or ...?

I enjoyed the view. Took a few pictures. Drank 'Caffe Americano' and 'Fanta lemon' - and ate some sweet cake - in Torroella. And walked back to the Mediterranean Sea.  

By 2pm I was swimming in the sea. Tired but satisfied. Wondering - a sensation I always have when I swim in the Mediterranean - how the Egyptian soldiers felt when they were swimming in the Suez Canal on October 6, 1973. Doing their routine activities as deception while the first bullets were shot of the Yom Kippur War. Were they misguided too by their officers? Did they survive the war?