zondag 17 mei 2009

Norge, hot chocolate trance...and other weird feelings

A flag in blue-red-and-white won the commercial EU-fair contest show tonight. Just this year. Why this year? A victory to celebrate a Scandinavian Alexander and the national day of a country that reminds me of previous lives. I still have five out of nine left. Sometimes ordinary symbols become part of the decor of your ever-changing world. Uninvited, unconcious, invisible. Only when they re-appear in the next level, they bring you hack for a flash of mind. Still, national pride is a luxury of a bleeched past. How many neuroscientists would be needed to create a spotless collective memory?

Maybe there are differences. Maybe even more than seven. They need to be there of course, as long as we don't stare too long at them. It could blind us, like with the sun. After-images on cornea's, challenging beautiful but blinding and leaving intense footprints, even though time doesn't matter. Relativity, always relativity. And softness that switches me to another mode. Unlock...

Take a look in the mirror now. See what they see. Try to come closer, if you dare. I want to wake up again last morning, preferable right now, even before I fall asleep. Can I? Let's have a teddy bears reunion some day, a self-made chocolate funny shaped cookies kitchen session, a hitchhike to the real middle of nowhere, an eggless Spanish omelet for breakfast, ... Let's find the adventure that tries to find us. It's playing hide and seek between papers and laptops and maybe even captured between four walls.

I am afraid of the day there will be nothing to talk about anymore. When we know everything or worse, when it doesn't matter anymore, when all words so far were senseless and it's late to adjust the whole theory of a life time. I wouldn't even wish such an end to my worst enemy. There should be a good final sentence. A line that catches the whole spirit, magically brings all the story lines together... Connect. A cross point. I am not a quick writer, so the final sentence is still too far away to be written or vocaluzed. But once it will be written, there wouldn't be anything else I could say. Everything would have been said... and sad. It's hard to stay ahead of a world that has existed millions of years longer than your life.

donderdag 14 mei 2009

Olifactory Odyssey and Colors of Cats Craves

Olifactory Odyssey and Colors of Cats Craves and just so much more.
(unwritten)
Too tired to mention more than a sentence that made me smile today.

a mind is like a parachute, it doesn't work if it is not open
Frank Zappa

All the rest you already know. So far...

zondag 10 mei 2009

Because words are the building stones...

My 70th blogpost, the twenty-second celebration that my mother got a child, the second night of surreal dreams, the first temptation of the creamy chocolate brownie... Heads are stubborn creatures, they ache and twinkle and tickle, catch fire and beg their eyes to sleep without warning their owners. Still, I like that unpredictability. It must be a natural prevention for us not to become social robots.

At the second-hand market in our street my mother almost sold "ik ken 500 woorden (I know 500 words)", my kindergarden favourite. I could rescue it from the blanket. Why did I like that book so much 20 years ago? I was chocked when I read the images and the accompaning texts again. "We eten vlees met groenten erbij (we eat meat with some vegetables next to it)", "Vader bakt worsten en vlees (father fries sausages and meat) ", ...
Terrible those manipulating cultural messages, the indoctrination of the 'meat-mania' even in pre-school children books. How dare they? No wonder so many people think it's 'natural', just like 'the apple is red' and 'de baker sells bread"are a matter of fact.

Just like the second page of the book "boy"vs "girl". Exactly the same image, only differentiated by a girl's swimming suit and a boy's boxershort. Still, different categories. A giant mustache on an "older man's"face. "Moeder maakt de kamer schoon met de stofzuiger. Ze heeft ook een zwabber, bezem en stofdoek" (mother cleans the house), vader hakt een boom om" (father cuts a tree). And of course there are only male football players and car makers and where do we find the mothers "in de supermarkt"(in the supermarket) on page 11.
And what about "the bull attacks the bull fighter"in the category ' television'? In 1972, the year "ik ken 500 woorden"was written, it was all possible. I only hope that the contemporary word-learning books are less conservative and narrow-minded. An if it doesn't exist yet, I could maybe consider it as a new writing project... "From Alternative food to Zen-Tofu, the world consists of more than 500 words". Wouldn't that be nice...?

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Swine Influenza

Food for Thought (from a smart, life-teaching Earth Save Newsletter)

"[I]t is our proximity to the animals that have sustained us for millennia that makes us so vulnerable to the diseases that can kill us in large numbers. Ever since man stopped being a hunter-gatherer and began to live cheek by jowl with his livestock, he has run the risk of pandemics.

Many human diseases originated with domesticated animals: measles and tuberculosis from cattle; smallpox from cattle or other livestock with related pox viruses; flu from pigs and ducks; and whooping cough from dogs. These pathogens developed and spread easily because the animals lived in herds or packs.

When they were domesticated by the first farmers, the viruses were waiting to be passed on. These so-called zoonotic diseases are then transmitted more readily among humans because people themselves live in close proximity to one another."

--Philip Johnstonin the London TelegraphApril 30, 2009

donderdag 7 mei 2009

Bachelorpaper-Freude

Morning. Eight fresh male body books from the university library smiling next to me: rediscovery of the man, women's studies, masculinities, empathy and feminist ethics. What else can you wish for at a moment like this? In the last internally hectic month before the deadline... What a life... Waking up realizing there is not a single place where you rather would be, with a thousand unknown pages to be read. Just not all at once, page by page, line by line, as if you learn to read again. Take it slow, relax, don't miss the best parts between the lines, written in pencil ...

Take the time and let's erase the boundaries between each others cover.

zaterdag 2 mei 2009

It's just that the time was wrong...

It's staying up until 3 am at night to say you just don't want to leave yet. Seeing 'yet' as a witness in the corner of the screen. It's coming late for the life you used to live and don't even bother. Catching buses for the trains you missed, flying with embracing wings in the backseat of a bicycle.
It's racing with the speed of heart, while resting in the peace of a park in spring. It's thanking hindoe-gods for miracles, hear you call my name in the notes of a melody, even being 'read' by you in every single way...

It's knowing you, I guess, and know that you know we know... each other.

Thanks for visiting!