Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Intersection

My life of the past 10 years summarized in 4 words: walking, reading, flying, kids.

What did I really do during the past 6 years? 

  • Hardly walk. I don't give it enough priority. Most of the time my time slips away with kids and house. 
  • Read a lot. As always.
  • Flying. I would love to fly a glider every weekend but I don't.
  • Kids. I love to have my kids around. They are getting more and more independent from me.

Riddle: What word is missing in the intersection of these two lists? Yes, you know!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Mining Flint. Old Story with Modern Topics

I guess it's not completely your cup of tea but I am impressed by our smart 'homo sapiens' ancestors. They were effective, efficient, used fallback scenarios and worked as a team. Sounds pretty modern, doesn't it?

Let's go back in time. 6,000 years ago our ancestors worked together in mining flint in Rijckholt-St Geertruid. In a part of the world we now call The Netherlands. They dug shafts with a diameter of 1 metre. Until they arrived at the level (around 4-12 metres) with the rich flint chunks.
There they gathered the flint in galleries of maximum 8 metres deep. No deeper because the sunlight doesn't shine any further. After gallery 1 they dug gallery 2. Gallery 1 was filled with the debris of gallery 2. Gallery 2 with 3. Gallery 3 with 4. And gallery 5? This gallery was left empty as an (extra) escape route for shaft 2.

What did they harvest in these prehistoric flint mines? Flint! Upstairs the big flint chunks were knapped with hammer-stones into useful smaller, tradable, ready-to-use chunks. These chunks travelled as raw material sometimes hundreds of kilometres and were manufactured, on the spot, into useful flint tools: knives, axes, scythes, scrapers, pierces, arrow-heads, etc. Sounds pretty modern, doesn't it?

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Don't Squeeze

Time slips away. Most of the time we are not aware of it and trample time, light-heeled, with our bird's feet.
Remember? As told so many times: I'll never put you - meu melro - in a cage behind a door. Just sit down in the palm of my flat hand. I'll talk sweet to you and enchant you with whatever I can think of: words, books, poems, pictures, food, wine, dreams or ... - there must be more. You can fly away whenever you want to. I'll not squeeze. Feel free to come and go. Fly birdie. Fly! And drop in whenever ...

What more to say than listen with you to this beautiful song from Tom Jobim: 'Fotografia'
Eu, você, nós dois
Aqui neste terraço à beira-mar
And there's always a song to tell that old story 
Aquele beijo 
Aquele beijo

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Chicken for Sunday's Lunch

Blackbirds, sparrows, pigeons and magpies. Sometimes a few rabbits. These are the animals of my childhood. The center of the world was our schoolyard. Close to our house. The place where we played soccer, hide-and-seek, tag and many games with names I can't remember. Next to the schoolyard, separated by a huge beech hedge, was the cemetery.

We were not allowed to but most of the time the cemetery was part of our extended playground. For us the cemetery was the place of old and buried people. And the place of birds and rabbits. The schoolyard was for us youngsters.

I am convinced that growing up next to the cemetery caused me to see that dying and death is natural. It's not a strange and dark world. Not a world apart. Not something to be afraid of. It's just the place behind the hedge. Warmed by the same sun. Getting wet by the same rain. For the birds, rabbits and us kids just a place where we could play.

The schooldays of back then are gone. Partly stored in my memory with the sepia of golden days. Since then my brother found a hole in the ground of this cemetery. A few rows behind him 3 generations of my father's side of my family. Last year we buried my mother-in-law here. And one day I'll be buried there too.

P.S. Last weekend I finished reading Clarice Lispector's book 'Family Ties'. I was not flabbergasted. I guess for the biggest part because my expectations were too high. I will re-read this book within 1 year. This first time I was too greedy to read the stories. In a way I was not able to adjust my way of breathing. Too greedy. 
I loved the story 'The Chicken' very much. (The only story of this book I loved.) It was the chicken for Sunday's lunch that escaped. After being caught the chicken laid an egg. That saved her life. "The chicken became the queen of the household. Everybody, except her, knew it. She ran to and fro, from the kitchen to the terrace at the back of the house, exploiting her two sources of power: apathy and fear.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Mixture of Blossom and Ipanema

This morning I was drinking coffee under my veranda. Watching the clouds: grey and full of rain. Every now and then a little sun: warm and cosy. Windy. I looked at the blossom of the shrub behind the henhouse. No idea what the official name is of that bush. I call it: "that shrub with small white balls". The wind had blown away quite a lot of blossom. 1 week ago that shrub looked perfect. And now? Now it's over the top. The shrub was only perfect for about 14 days. 14 days and not one day more.



I guess that it's this emotion that makes us 'homo sapiens' (all of them? only after a certain age?) filled with saudade when we look at blossom, cherry blossom (Japanese 'sakura') and girls like Helô Pinheiro (the original 'Garota de Ipanema'). Beauty. Light. Mature life. On its top! At the same time realizing that life is short and that youth and beauty fades. On its top but for how long?

Monday I met a female colleague - a very beautiful and mature one ;) - I hadn't seen for more than a year. We chatted a little. Out of the blue she told me - it was something she wanted to tell me a couple of times before but never did - that I was "special" and "so not-Dutch". I was (better: am) "though", "direct" and at the same time "not a blunt Dutchman". There was something "mysterious" and "exotic" in me. Who ever told us that males don't like compliments? I felt very honoured! :)

P.S. Don't be jealous. There's no need to.  I felt very honoured. She made me feel special. At the same time I realize that I'm over my top and that I'm comfortable with that fact.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

You Know

#NotInTheMood ... - you know. [Skip] the subject.

While waiting for the arrival of Clarice Lispector's book 'Family Ties' I started, last week, reading two books (in Dutch) on #Breivik for background information:
  • Eildert Mulder, 'Anders Breivik is niet alleen' (March 2012)
  • Jan Jaap de Ruiter, 'De ideologie van de PVV. Het kwade goed en het goede kwaad' (March 2012)
I'm convinced that mixing and mingling of different cultures, religions and races is good and inspirational. A guarantee not to get frozen as individuals, society or country. Breivik's persistence on claiming that he did the Right Thing by killing seventy-seven people in Norway made me push on the [Pause]-button. Did I miss something? Am I too brainwashed? Did I fall asleep? What is my blindness according to the new knight templar Breivik? 

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. What do I have to understand?  According to Breivik  the Muslims are emigrating to the western world with the aim to destroy Christianity and establish a Muslim state. The Muslims are nice, considerate and pose no threat but are actually using 'taqiyya', this is concealing their belief and aims. What to do next in Europe, USA, Australia and in the rest of the western world? Can we still be saved? Via democracy? Answer: No, too many brainwashed people. Via institutions? No, takes too much time. There is no time left! According to Breivik there was only one solutions left: terror. That's what he used  on July 22, 2011. It was a wakeup call and call to action. Wake up! Act! The rest of the new knight templars (and 35% op the people who support this cause) will have to bully, deport or kill the Muslims. Before it's too late.

I pushed on the [Pause]-button again. 

Then to be understood. Breivik's wakeup call did not convince me. According to me, he is frozen on Muslims. It can't be true that Islam is only totalitarian, violent, immutable, uniform and incapable of reform and democracy. In the end we all want the same: a happy family around us and be merry with our friends.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Bottom of the Stack

Today I found in my e-mailbox at the bottom of the stack an e-mail I forgot. Remember the letter I wrote about Hiram Bingham's "discovery" of Machu Picchu? Not? Here it is ;)

Two months ago I wrote an e-mail to Roger Balm asking him for details about the pictures Bingham took on July 24th, 1911. On this day Bingham immediately set about taking a series of 28-30 photographs. Listing and naming each shot carefully.

Roger wrote in 2004 in 'Focus on Geography' his article 'The Expeditionary Eye: Reconstructing the First Photographs of Machu Picchu'. I asked him if I could find Bingham's 28-30 pictures somewhere online? Answer: No! These rare and fascinating documents are only accessible offline in the archives of the anthropology museum at Yale. I asked him also if he had a copy of the notes/ diary Bingham made on July 24, 1911 and how he got the total number of photos taken by Bingham. Answer: "Bingham was an accurate note taker and he identified and numbered each photograph in his field notebook so I got that total from the notebooks archived at mail. Unfortunately, the pages for July 24 are missing from the archive. A book you may find useful is "Portrait of an Explorer" by Hiram's grandson, Alfred. It is well illustrated with old photographs.

Remember that we have to visit the Yale archives and check out these boxes:
I want to check out if there are pictures of the three families (Richarte, Alvarez and ?) that lived on Machu Picchu when Bingham "found" this site in 1911. I would love to see Richarte's and Alvarez's pictures. Their families. Their gardens. In the middle of Machu Picchu. Why? I guess it's something romantic: #first #paradise #garden #indians

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

His Words. Word for Word

Yesterday evening I read Breivik's statement he made on the second day of his trial (April 17, 2012). Word for word. A statement of 13 pages (source). As far as I can tell from his statement, he is not nuts. From his point of view he is a defender of "the Norwegian culture and my people".  He made a preventive attack for the sake of "our ethnic group, our culture, our Christianity, our identity".  His enemies? Liberals, (kultur) marxists, immigrants and colonization. His real enemy: muslims, who use 'deception' as a weapon and in the end want autonomy and self-government with sharia in his Norwege and Europe.


His Words:
"I stand here today as representative of the Norwegian and European resistance movement. When I speak, I speak on behalf of the many Norwegians who do not want our indigenous rights will be taken from us.
(…)
Norway and other countries in Western Europe are democratic countries and have not been democratic since the interwar period.
Liberals and kulturmarxistene has 2 World War II, worked together to keep (…) from power, as their ultimate fear is that new Hitlers should pop up. What today is called a democracy, is in fact a kulturmarxistisk dictatorship.
(…)
It is equally ignorant to call me cruel, as to call the U.S. military leaders during World War II vicious. Those who decided that 3.2 million Japanese civilians were killed. They did so not because they were evil, but because they calculated that a violent reaction would save millions of lives.
These were good intentions and motives, even if the methods they used were brutal. I and other nationalists are using exactly the same logic. If we could force Labor to change immigration policy and prevent colonization.
If we can force them to change direction by executing 70 people, then the obvious contribute to that we will not lose our ethnic group, our Christianity and our culture.
(…)
When a great civil war will be averted. We do not have the luxury that we can expect more of confrontation. Because if we wait 20,30, 40 years, the ethnic Norwegians and Europeans to be in the minority. We have therefore not able to wait long. The designs are based on our goodness and not evil.

If there is someone who is evil, it’s Social Democrats, who not only engaged in systematic ethnic deconstruction, it is also made tens of thousands of threats that the consequences will be very bloody.
(…)
Today’s most successful nations are Japan and South Korea, which has used ethnic protectionism.
This model is currently the most perfect of all political models. In Europe, the alliance between Marxists and liberals after World War II, in principle, destroyed Europe.
(…)
This is the most precious and most reliable. Our ethnic group is the heart of our own culture. Our culture can not survive without a strong heart. To maintain this ethnic group, our culture, is what our ancestors dedicated their lives to it hundreds of thousands have fought for.
Our ethnic group, our culture, our Christianity, our identity … It is the framework for the defense, and I take the interests of families and the victims.
(…)
The second is that all Muslims are practicing deception as the Prophet Muhammad recommended to use. One can not rely on such secular Muslims, because it may be that they implement a so-called deception.
(…)
Many Muslims do not want to be integrated. They disdain the sexual revolution and the moral decay that characterizes not only Norway, but Europe. They want sharia. (…) They want autonomy and self-government with sharia. 
(…)
We are no more terrorists against the native Britons who fought against those who fasciliterte the Roman invasion. Norway has an indigenous population. Are Norway’s indigenous ethnic Norwegians?
Did the indigenous people lived here over the past 12,000 years?
The answer is yes, Norway has an indigenous and ethnic Norwegians are Norway’s indigenous people.
(…)
The attacks were preventatives attacks in defense of the Norwegian culture and my people. I acted with the principle of necessity on behalf of my people, my religion, my ethnicity, my city and my country.
I therefore demand that I be acquitted of these charges."

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Sunshine in Bern

Days are passing by. Como as nuvens no céu. I hardly have time to write to you.

Yesterday evening I checked out Wikipedia for Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977). Read a couple of reviews. She looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf. I'm not impressed by Marlene. And I never read anything - if I remember well - of Virginia Woolf. So this is hardly a recommendation for me. I checked Clarice out because many of my Brazilian friends keep on quoting her. She died more than 30 years ago! So I'm curious about her writing.
Clarice was born as 'Chaya' in Ukraine. Her family suffered terribly in the pogroms during the Russian Civil War. In 1922 her family managed to flee to Brazil. Her parents both died young. She married a diplomat. And lived for more than ten years in Europe and in the USA.

I put these three books on my reading-list:
  • 'Family ties' (1960). Original written in Portuguese 'Lacos de Familia'. "Best book of stories ever written in Brazil".
  • 'The passion according to G.H.' (1964). Original written in Portuguese 'A Paixão Segundo G.H.'. "Great" mystic novel.
  • 'The stream of life' (1973). Original written in Portuguese 'Água Viva'. Many consider this as Clarice "best" book.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Ancient Pine

"Sit down by this high-foliaged voiceful pine that rustles her branches beneath the western breezes, and beside my chattering waters Pan's pipe shall bring drowsiness down on your enchanted eyelids."
Come my love
Sit down next to me under these pine trees near the sea 
Let's enjoy the view, eat a little, drink a litte 
Write poems together 
Kiss a little
Let's get
enchanted 
by
our
love
-
what
else

P.S. This epigram of ancient Greece - more than 2,300 years old - is of doubtful authenticity. Some claim it's from Plato [source].