Yes I Am From The Netherlands. No ...

More on Dutch:

• How they look at other countries
• Main stream music in The Netherlands

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?

Pecan Pie. The Perfect One

Marcos' search for the perfect pecan pie (portuguese 'torta de nozes'), in his expat country, remembered me of a quote that gives direction to my life for so long. It's a quote I discovered more than 30 years ago in the book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' from Robert Pirsig, page 84: 

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. "You’re not looking!" he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, "Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick."

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide. She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a fivethousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. "I sat in the hamburger stand across the street," she said, "and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop." 

The image of focusing on just one random brick in a building makes it so easy for me to: write a blogpost, listen to music, share a dream, pick a book to read or start a conversation. It's sooooooooo obvious for me but I realize that it's not a natural modus for everyone. 

Start with This pecan pie. Start with That pecan pie. Perfect pecan pies are born ... step by step ... brick by brick. Out of patience and concentration. Breath in. Breath out.

P.S. I'm on holiday for the next 4 weeks. Write me a letter every day :)

Leaves of Red and Gold

"I miss you most of all my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall"

Eva Cassidy/ Autumn Leaves

I Already Know

Two more! I found two more images of love. 

By accident - really accidently? - I heard two more this week. The first one in the song 'Open Your Heart' of Madonna: Lock and Key.

"Open your heart to me, baby

I hold the lock and you hold the key

Open your heart to me, darlin'

I'll give you love if you, turn the key"

The second: Account. Ana Moura sings in her song 'Por Minha Conta' that the night is cold and hazy. Everything is empty. She is lost and looking for a hiding - that's a third image. The bills have to be paid by or you (Portuguese 'sua') or me ('minha'). And not by us ('nossa'). There's nothing mutual right now.

I guess we could collect more than 99 images of love. Don't you think so too? I already know what image number 100 is. And you?

What is your favourite image of love?

P.S. This is my reading list of Summer 2012

A Little Deeper. Please!

Did you ever visit my Chinese Garden? In a way it's my image of our time and age. Everything seems so transparent and easily accessible today. It seems we are able to grasp other people by checking out their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etcetera profiles. But the painful truth is we only take a look on their surfaces. Never (better: almost never) too deep! The only thing I see on TV are one-liners and jokes.

Are we patient enough? Am I? Are you? Patient enough to listen, talk and learn to deal with weaknesses, uncertainties and 'I don't know. Let me think about it!'? Of me, you and Others?

A couple of years ago - I can't remember how long ago - I read Ryszard Kapuscinski's book 'The Other'. His masterclass in eight quotes: 

1. "Deep curiosity about the world is not a common phenomenon either. Most people have little interest in it."
2. "For many people the world outside is a source of anxiety, arousing fear of the unexpected, or even the terror of death."
3. "All civilisations have a tendency towards narcissism, and the stronger the civilisation, the more clearly this tendency will appear."
4. "The myths of many tribes and people include a belief that only we are human, the members of our clan, our society, and the Others - all Others - are subhuman, or not human at all."
5. "Human experience shows that at the first moment, as a first reflex a person reacts to an Other with reserve and restraint, mistrust or plain reluctance, or even with hostility."
6. "And so the three possibilities I have mentioned have always stood before man whenever he has encountered an Other: he could choose war, he could fence himself in behind a wall, or he could start up a dialogue."
7. "Other, let us repeat, are mirror in which I look at myself, and which tells me who I am."
8. "That we accept the Other, although he is different, and that this difference, this otherness is rich and valuable, it is a good thing. Yet at the same time this difference does not erase my identification with the Other: 'I am someone Other'."

And Every Bird

Some days are more busy than others. Today is one of those 'more busy' days. 

This morning I exchanged the new big screen TV for the new kids' room. This room will be ready in 3 weeks. Bought three new bottles 'Vieille Réserve' from Paul Giraud. Right now I'm dreaming about taking a hot bath - do you want to join me ;) - and a bathroom filled with the smell of prunier and chocolate. Also bought four bottles of Italian red wine: 'Insoglio del cinghiale, Campo di Sasso, Bibbona (Toscana) 2010' and 'Massimo, Lenotti (Bardolino) 2008'.  Two bottles each. Too expensive but I wanted to buy them anyway. 

Lunch with the kids. At 16h T gymnastics. At 18h join X at his camping party with his primary school class. Next year he will go to high school. I'll be home around 1h :(

In between: dinner and work.

Change the subject. This song of Nelly Furtado/ Stars reminds me of you. This is my reality:

"You're a part of me

You're in every song that I sing

And every bird that sings to me"

P.S. I've to check out Curt Backeberg (1894-1966) he wrote 'Stachliche Wildnis' on his travels searching for cacti in South-America. In fact he was a hunter. Hunting on cacti.  

P.P.S. What is your favorite read wine? And white wine? And champagne?
P.P.P.S. Between 1630-1654 "we" Dutch ruled over Dutch Brazil or New Holland. I don't know anything about this colony and its history.