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Ignorance by Andre Platteel , April 28th

He had reserved a table at their favourite restaurant, which they would visit after seeing a film at a nearby cinema. In the film, a little boy dies. The whole family is devastated but tries to ignore his death and get on with their lives. Thanks to living in denial, however, death almost completely takes over their lives. She was still sad about the boy during dinner. He couldn’t talk her out of it by saying that it was just a movie and that if she Googled the actor’s name, she would see that he was still alive. She answered that these things happen in real life, too: people die and the sadness it causes can be so big that the people left behind die a great deal as well. Whatever he was trying to say to cheer her up, he was actually making her sadder, even more upset. The restaurant had an outstanding name, but her meat was too red. And her beans looked frail. She hardly ate anything. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, she said she wasn’t sure if she loved him – that she felt it was possible that her love for him could disappear. How can love be true if there is a chance that it could pass? He felt her distancing herself from him. Tears welled up in his eyes, although he knew she wasn’t talking about their love. She went to the bathroom and returned pale and sweaty. He said 'sweetie'. She eventually filled the silence that followed by saying that she also doubted life, because life is not eternal, and how can you trust something that ends? He ordered some coffee and + more He had reserved a table at their favourite restaurant, which they would visit after seeing a film at a nearby cinema. In the film, a little boy dies. The whole family is devastated but tries to ignore his death and get on with their lives. Thanks to living in denial, however, death almost completely takes over their lives. She was still sad about the boy during dinner. He couldn’t talk her out of it by saying that it was just a movie and that if she Googled the actor’s name, she would see that he was still alive. She answered that these things happen in real life, too: people die and the sadness it causes can be so big that the people left behind die a great deal as well. Whatever he was trying to say to cheer her up, he was actually making her sadder, even more upset. The restaurant had an outstanding name, but her meat was too red. And her beans looked frail. She hardly ate anything. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, she said she wasn’t sure if she loved him – that she felt it was possible that her love for him could disappear. How can love be true if there is a chance that it could pass? He felt her distancing herself from him. Tears welled up in his eyes, although he knew she wasn’t talking about their love. She went to the bathroom and returned pale and sweaty. He said 'sweetie'. She eventually filled the silence that followed by saying that she also doubted life, because life is not eternal, and how can you trust something that ends? He ordered some coffee and chocolates and told her that they had come to this beautiful restaurant to celebrate love and life. Seeing these words fail, he tried another tack: ‘You know, when something passes and seemingly ends it comes from something eternal.’ ‘But when one of us dies,’ she asked sweetly, ‘we are separated. You can’t deny that, can you?’ The waiter came back with a cup filled with chocolates and raspberries. He tried again, with different words. But these didn’t convince either. He couldn’t reach her or himself. Their minds were filled with voices that had created a conspiracy against everything they believed in and knew was true. - less tagged:   ignorance   mind   life   love   fear    permalink  read: 2252  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

Mother of all memories by Andre Platteel , June 1st

It was almost finished: the detailed model of the memory he had spent the last few years searching for. A search begun after a short but terrifying moment one particular night (a night thus far unmemorable). The night had gone something like this: woke up; realized the reason he had woken up was a lack of breath; reached for oxygen that his body failed to absorb; opened his mouth only to find nothing there, nothing that was willing to fill his lungs; noticed he had left his body and saw himself choking into nothingness, just white, recently washed sheets around him. And then, out of nowhere, something, a little sound (he thought), or at least something that sounded like a sound, something not so trivial, a vivid but veiled memory that made life flow again. That which had brought life back into him had not only brought back his body; his body was brought back into something, something full and sweet, something he knew he knew, but was forgotten. He became obsessed with the sweetness and fullness he felt connected with, something that he called ‘it’. Immediately the same night, the night now made memorable due to what had happened, he crammed his ideas and thoughts about what ‘it’ could be onto small, sticky pieces of yellow paper. He was tracing ‘it’ and felt how he was coming closer and closer to knowing it. There were moments when he thought he would embrace what he was looking for in a split second, something ‘just around the corner’. But always, the thing he was chasing found a way to escape. The harder he tried the more he seemed to forget what ‘it’ exactly was all about. He changed his strategies; he surrounded ‘it’ carefully and peeled the mystery from the thing he wanted to know so obsessively. That’s actually how the idea of a model began. Since ‘it’ had hit a memory deep inside him, ‘it’ had to be something in his brain, he thought. He created a copy of his brain with its collective memories represented by the sticky yellow notes, by images he had drawn or torn out of magazines, and by sounds he had collected. Sometimes (almost always when he was not so busy chasing) images entered his mind that resonated with ‘it’. He wrote them down and stuck them into his model: jigsaw pieces of a puzzle soon to be whole. + more It was almost finished: the detailed model of the memory he had spent the last few years searching for. A search begun after a short but terrifying moment one particular night (a night thus far unmemorable). The night had gone something like this: woke up; realized the reason he had woken up was a lack of breath; reached for oxygen that his body failed to absorb; opened his mouth only to find nothing there, nothing that was willing to fill his lungs; noticed he had left his body and saw himself choking into nothingness, just white, recently washed sheets around him. And then, out of nowhere, something, a little sound (he thought), or at least something that sounded like a sound, something not so trivial, a vivid but veiled memory that made life flow again. That which had brought life back into him had not only brought back his body; his body was brought back into something, something full and sweet, something he knew he knew, but was forgotten. He became obsessed with the sweetness and fullness he felt connected with, something that he called ‘it’. Immediately the same night, the night now made memorable due to what had happened, he crammed his ideas and thoughts about what ‘it’ could be onto small, sticky pieces of yellow paper. He was tracing ‘it’ and felt how he was coming closer and closer to knowing it. There were moments when he thought he would embrace what he was looking for in a split second, something ‘just around the corner’. But always, the thing he was chasing found a way to escape. The harder he tried the more he seemed to forget what ‘it’ exactly was all about. He changed his strategies; he surrounded ‘it’ carefully and peeled the mystery from the thing he wanted to know so obsessively. That’s actually how the idea of a model began. Since ‘it’ had hit a memory deep inside him, ‘it’ had to be something in his brain, he thought. He created a copy of his brain with its collective memories represented by the sticky yellow notes, by images he had drawn or torn out of magazines, and by sounds he had collected. Sometimes (almost always when he was not so busy chasing) images entered his mind that resonated with ‘it’. He wrote them down and stuck them into his model: jigsaw pieces of a puzzle soon to be whole. One night, a night when sleep would not come, he went downstairs, switched on the light of a room that was once his office space but which now provided space for the model that had outgrown the size of his brain by at least twenty times. He saw how the light brought life to the fragments and realized, out of nowhere, that all the different pieces could never unravel the memory he was so obsessed with. All these fragments could never add up to what he was seeking. How could he have thought that he would discover the totality of ‘it’ by isolating fragments, by analysing memories? Not a single piece of what he had gathered said anything about what was so important to him. Every connection he had tried to make, every effort to connect two or more fragments together, had created only the idea of something that was about to become whole. He had been tracing something that could never be revealed by assembling fragments to serve as a manual. And yet it did. He was about to leave the room when, for no particular reason, he turned back with an almost unnatural faithfulness. He flicked the light on again and saw how his model of many fragments had come alive. It could have been something about the artificial light, or the sleep that was about to knock him out, but he saw how the fragments not only told their own story, he saw ‘it’ in every fragment. ‘It’ was not a particular memory; ‘it’ was omnipresent. He saw how his model became a hologram, 'it' being present in all the different parts of his model. And fragments he had not connected became connected by ‘it’. He turned off the light again, went to sleep and dreamed about what he had seen. He knew that what he had seen was something that can never been seen by the eye, and yet is present in everything we see. He slept well that night, heard the sound of light, and felt how the memory that is embedded in everything made all memories come home. - less tagged:   light   spaciousness   connectedness   life   Body   mind   memory    permalink  read: 7047  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

The Wolf by Andre Platteel , April 17th

He closed the door of his house but in the act of closing could not forget the encounter he had had a few hours ago with his friend, the wolf, who actually had turned into a wolf and told him, in a language that was strange to him but which, to his surprise, he could immediately understand, that the world was made of foam, a tiny and transparent layer of experiences that evaporates the moment you try to catch it, foam that creates an illusion of substance and the idea that something lies between you and the world – “be careful,” the wolf had warned, “make sure the foam doesn’t create the suggestion of two where there is really only one, and do not waste time putting energy into it for it will make you childish, like a child blowing soap bubbles who believes they are worlds outside him when they are actually created by the same substance that give form to the child itself” – yet even as he was listening to the wolf’s howling speech, his brain struggling to digest the meaning of it all, the wolf was forging ahead – “and when you waste time, be aware that this waste is actually the product of time, and that time itself can never be wasted, since time is just a creation of foam, as the bubble is a creation of the child” – but these words didn’t reach him because he was too busy thinking over the other stuff the wolf had said, his mind drifting away and coming up with this strange but persistent idea that he trusted the wolf more than he had ever trusted his friend when he was just called Wolf but had not yet turned into one as this wolf probably had no need to make him feel small, saw no advantage to lying to him and would not use the manipulative strategies he had noticed his friend sometimes using (and to be honest, used himself as well) when he was still a human being, and because he trusted the wolf more than the man his friend once was the howling sounds touched him in unexpected ways opening doors of darkness that he saw and felt transform his body, making his legs weak, slowing his thinking, turning his blood a lighter colour, directing his breath to something unfamiliar, far away (like the ant he once read about who left his friends and loved ones to go to ‘far away’ and never came back) and while noticing all this happening heard how a voice had entered his body or actually how he had become attuned to a weathered voice that seemed to come from + more He closed the door of his house but in the act of closing could not forget the encounter he had had a few hours ago with his friend, the wolf, who actually had turned into a wolf and told him, in a language that was strange to him but which, to his surprise, he could immediately understand, that the world was made of foam, a tiny and transparent layer of experiences that evaporates the moment you try to catch it, foam that creates an illusion of substance and the idea that something lies between you and the world – “be careful,” the wolf had warned, “make sure the foam doesn’t create the suggestion of two where there is really only one, and do not waste time putting energy into it for it will make you childish, like a child blowing soap bubbles who believes they are worlds outside him when they are actually created by the same substance that give form to the child itself” – yet even as he was listening to the wolf’s howling speech, his brain struggling to digest the meaning of it all, the wolf was forging ahead – “and when you waste time, be aware that this waste is actually the product of time, and that time itself can never be wasted, since time is just a creation of foam, as the bubble is a creation of the child” – but these words didn’t reach him because he was too busy thinking over the other stuff the wolf had said, his mind drifting away and coming up with this strange but persistent idea that he trusted the wolf more than he had ever trusted his friend when he was just called Wolf but had not yet turned into one as this wolf probably had no need to make him feel small, saw no advantage to lying to him and would not use the manipulative strategies he had noticed his friend sometimes using (and to be honest, used himself as well) when he was still a human being, and because he trusted the wolf more than the man his friend once was the howling sounds touched him in unexpected ways opening doors of darkness that he saw and felt transform his body, making his legs weak, slowing his thinking, turning his blood a lighter colour, directing his breath to something unfamiliar, far away (like the ant he once read about who left his friends and loved ones to go to ‘far away’ and never came back) and while noticing all this happening heard how a voice had entered his body or actually how he had become attuned to a weathered voice that seemed to come from deep inside and told him - no warned him - that curiosity will kill us, that courage will kill us, that love will kill us, and while listening he thought of a person behind the voice and saw a fat man wearing dark glasses with dark hair and dark shoes and told this man “no this is not true, love, curiosity and courage are our supporters” and then thought (and said) “no you are right it will kill us, it will kill what needs to be killed in order to discover the wolf inside us” and started howling as if he had always been a wolf and left to give voice inside and started howling out loud reaching out to his friend the wolf and chatting howling about the freedom they were experiencing and how freedom was no longer a place to escape to but a state of being, and they were howling about the pleasure of giving up this fight against the ‘that’ that makes us fearful; the ‘that’ that creates enemies blood stench and wounds; the ‘that’ that is continually changing so it is hard to fight and so creates even more fear the next ‘that’ and the next ‘that’ and the next and the one after that because the wolves could go on forever because ‘that’ goes on forever “as long as you do not see that ‘that’ is just foam” the first wolf said, and the other wolf just turned and said “yes, that’s right and now it’s time to go home” to which his friend the first wolf said “you never left home”. And the wolves turned to the home they had never left. - less tagged:   wolf   friend   creation   home   foam   life   darkness    permalink  read: 6776  print  forward  comments: 1  add comment      name:  prague@planet.nl, April 17th • Prachtig verhaal, Dré. Je geeft er een hoop liefde mee weg en daar is liefde ook voor. Louis

Photo: André Platteel

Dancing with the Beloved by Andre Platteel , January 26th

I had no idea that you could walk to the end of the world. Finally, after hours and hours of walking, Goodness came to me unreservedly. The ground had turned soft and sandy. I felt how the earth was sinking into me. My eyes had had time to adjust to the brightness of her beauty. Now that I was in front of her, I realized that she had been visible throughout my journey. Too close to see at first. The more I walked the brighter and more visible she became. She looks amazing, dressed stylishly in black, not a colour I had expected. A furrowed face reveals infinite layers of life that you can see in a single moment. “Welcome home; the place you have never left.” Her voice is tender. Every word placed carefully into silence. “You are so alive.” I didn’t mean to speak, but it’s what happens. “Life’s aliveness shines through us vividly when we remain alive and die in the same moment.” Her feet start moving. Just a little. The rest of her doesn’t move at all. A beautiful maroon flower in her hair. Two feathers. Somewhere. “Don’t you miss the other world?” Her brightness catches fire deep inside me. I know there is no way back. It’s nostalgia speaking: I fear losing what I thought I had. “From this perspective there is no other world. All worlds are included. And yet this place is beyond every world. Your question comes from memory. You are now no longer bound by memory. But you may use your memory freely.” She pulls a torch from her pocket, creates a circle of light around her and starts dancing. Funny faces. Funny movements. “Join me.” We dance. “From now on you are no longer in experiences; you are in relationship.” This woman could be my grandmother. She could be my daughter. She could be my sister. Or brother. It starts heating up. She becomes my lover. I cannot help saying it: “I think I’m beginning to love you.” “I know,” she says. “When you become intimate with what is, Love’s face appears naturally. Irresistibly. From now on, everything with which you are in a relationship will be recognized as love.” + more I had no idea that you could walk to the end of the world. Finally, after hours and hours of walking, Goodness came to me unreservedly. The ground had turned soft and sandy. I felt how the earth was sinking into me. My eyes had had time to adjust to the brightness of her beauty. Now that I was in front of her, I realized that she had been visible throughout my journey. Too close to see at first. The more I walked the brighter and more visible she became. She looks amazing, dressed stylishly in black, not a colour I had expected. A furrowed face reveals infinite layers of life that you can see in a single moment. “Welcome home; the place you have never left.” Her voice is tender. Every word placed carefully into silence. “You are so alive.” I didn’t mean to speak, but it’s what happens. “Life’s aliveness shines through us vividly when we remain alive and die in the same moment.” Her feet start moving. Just a little. The rest of her doesn’t move at all. A beautiful maroon flower in her hair. Two feathers. Somewhere. “Don’t you miss the other world?” Her brightness catches fire deep inside me. I know there is no way back. It’s nostalgia speaking: I fear losing what I thought I had. “From this perspective there is no other world. All worlds are included. And yet this place is beyond every world. Your question comes from memory. You are now no longer bound by memory. But you may use your memory freely.” She pulls a torch from her pocket, creates a circle of light around her and starts dancing. Funny faces. Funny movements. “Join me.” We dance. “From now on you are no longer in experiences; you are in relationship.” This woman could be my grandmother. She could be my daughter. She could be my sister. Or brother. It starts heating up. She becomes my lover. I cannot help saying it: “I think I’m beginning to love you.” “I know,” she says. “When you become intimate with what is, Love’s face appears naturally. Irresistibly. From now on, everything with which you are in a relationship will be recognized as love.” She takes my hands. She makes dynamic movements with me. I feel a bit silly. For a moment, I want to turn back, back to where I came from, taking the darkness I had crossed for granted. But, blinded by her brightness as I am, there is no chance my eyes will lead me back to where I came from. The area lit by her torch starts to grow bigger and bigger. And it happens by itself. She is not doing anything, just holding the torch. Effortlessly. More and more of our surroundings are enveloped. It starts snowing. A condor. Creatures howling with fear. The sun and the moon too. My bloodline. All those who were before us. Even the now is lit up. Everything becomes visible, including all the opposite sides of everything. All allow themselves to exist fully, to shine brightly and vividly, holding hands with what makes them Whole, without losing their character. The playground we dance in has become infinite, immediate, and brilliant. Although I feel a bit ashamed to ask, because it seems questions should not be voiced here, I still do so: “Is this the end?” A question deposited by fear, my curiosity kicking in. “No, silly. There is no end. Allow the end to be part of what is beyond ‘the end’. Her feet stop for a moment. She grabs my body firmly and looks into my eyes seriously. “Your Love is safe with me. For always.” And before I know it we are dancing again, and I begin to embrace the movements. - less tagged:   love   connectedness   movement   dancing   sun   connectedness   life   beyond   opposites    permalink  read: 9313  print  forward  comments: 4  add comment      name:  Herman Ouwersloot, February 10th • Heart warming words. In my experience a genuine and realistic story of a dear person Letty, February 4th • Wow... beeldschoon, onwerkelijk, surrealistisch en toch vertrouwd. Alsof je me een vergeten herinnering hebt teruggegeven. jerome, January 28th • erg mooi stuk. more comments    Diana Schadek, January 27th • beautiful thank you very much for this wonderful moment

Photo: André Platteel

A fragment of a circle by Andre Platteel , October 3rd

I haven’t seen him for quite some time, although our blood is the same and his hidden scars are no doubt to be found within me too. He drinks coffee; I drink tea, just a block away from where I live. He eats a chocolate cake, fast, as if he is afraid to really taste what he eats. Fastness, there has always been this fastness with him: no time to tune our hearts, ever. Now that he’s becoming older, fastness manifest itself as unease. He has his black leather jacket on, zipped, ready to leave any minute, although another coffee is on its way. I watch his lips turning dark brown, and take a sip of my tea; salty-tasting water. He dyes his hair dark ever since a few of them turned grey, covering the aging that would actually suit him so well. Although I’m watching his lips, I suddenly see that he is dressed completely in black. I can barely remember him in colours. And with that vague memory, the past suddenly arrives as a hole between us, our conversation disappearing into its nothingness. No words left to say ‘after’. Our jaws are muddy, having difficulties digesting the past. He is dying of something that he had hoped to live longer. My mind is full of anger, screaming ‘how could you ever’. I turned what I loved into light again And God wrote in the air about love first, death His kitchen full of white The sea so blue Impossible to know where it all begins He looks at me and talks through a mouth full of chocolate. And although his tongue speaks words that disappear before they reach my ears, I hear his voice reaching out to me, trying to tell me what my heart already knows: that he couldn’t have done it differently. His voice and my knowing, holds me fast. When the world screams for peace, there can still be war Between ‘then’ and now it is dark And for it to become bright The world that we hold between us, needs to leak Its anger and tears For years I have wanted to really meet him; confused by the idea that there was something in him still to be discovered, that somewhere deep in his heart there could be something more true than what I had encountered. But this is all what he is, and all what I am: this ‘thisness’, right now. The search for someone different made the hole bigger. And this thisness is much more than my ideas of him. “When are you going to marry?” he asks me, chocolate still covering his lips. I am surprised. It is such a sweet question. “I would love to see you get married to her.” + more I haven’t seen him for quite some time, although our blood is the same and his hidden scars are no doubt to be found within me too. He drinks coffee; I drink tea, just a block away from where I live. He eats a chocolate cake, fast, as if he is afraid to really taste what he eats. Fastness, there has always been this fastness with him: no time to tune our hearts, ever. Now that he’s becoming older, fastness manifest itself as unease. He has his black leather jacket on, zipped, ready to leave any minute, although another coffee is on its way. I watch his lips turning dark brown, and take a sip of my tea; salty-tasting water. He dyes his hair dark ever since a few of them turned grey, covering the aging that would actually suit him so well. Although I’m watching his lips, I suddenly see that he is dressed completely in black. I can barely remember him in colours. And with that vague memory, the past suddenly arrives as a hole between us, our conversation disappearing into its nothingness. No words left to say ‘after’. Our jaws are muddy, having difficulties digesting the past. He is dying of something that he had hoped to live longer. My mind is full of anger, screaming ‘how could you ever’. I turned what I loved into light again And God wrote in the air about love first, death His kitchen full of white The sea so blue Impossible to know where it all begins He looks at me and talks through a mouth full of chocolate. And although his tongue speaks words that disappear before they reach my ears, I hear his voice reaching out to me, trying to tell me what my heart already knows: that he couldn’t have done it differently. His voice and my knowing, holds me fast. When the world screams for peace, there can still be war Between ‘then’ and now it is dark And for it to become bright The world that we hold between us, needs to leak Its anger and tears For years I have wanted to really meet him; confused by the idea that there was something in him still to be discovered, that somewhere deep in his heart there could be something more true than what I had encountered. But this is all what he is, and all what I am: this ‘thisness’, right now. The search for someone different made the hole bigger. And this thisness is much more than my ideas of him. “When are you going to marry?” he asks me, chocolate still covering his lips. I am surprised. It is such a sweet question. “I would love to see you get married to her.” His words are the most old fashioned he ever spoke, the sounds the most lovely he ever gave me. I hold my breath and feel how he thaws something I was not aware of. Someone once told me that in ancient China parents helped their kids to build a house once the parents thought the kid was ready to live its own life, no matter what age. Helping to build a house was a way of imparting self-belief: this life is your life to be lived. He is a fragment of a circle I left to pick an apple from the tree On my way I found A snake It bit me and I screamed The circle round - less tagged:   father   light   circle   consciousness   God   love   wholeness   life    permalink  read: 8184  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

Northern Lights by Andre Platteel , March 28th

Today, I am quite immortal. I open my eyes and see a sky full of stars; a landscape that’s totally silent. Wide open. Dark background deepened through the ages. No time. There is no time that can make darkness as deep as this. A thought escapes: this does not exist. It does. Even if I was nothing more than air. I make a meaningless sound. Wait. Make another sound. Not loud, just for myself. I am trying to follow the rhythm of light and dark above me. And wondering: Is the darkness the silence between words or is it the light that represents silence? It makes a completely different rhyme. There is no distance between my eyes and the stars; their light burns my retina. My eyes fly. Anything further than ‘none’ falls off the edge of my vision. The Northern Lights are radiant tonight. It’s as if they are leading the other stars in a flight so fast that movement becomes invisible. How can lack of movement be so moving? I go into the living room. A big space. I see wood that makes a table. The table makes the living room. The living room makes the house. The house makes the street. What if this house decides to move somewhere else? The light outside has decided to shine on some garbage that’s acting silently, hoping to be left alone. I clean, light some candles and think of her and of the last time I saw her. There is a hole in my thinking. A sound. And with it returns the memory I failed to retrieve a second ago. I push a button. A short distance away a door is opening downstairs. A few seconds later she knocks and opens the door of the room, leaving me no time to answer. Long hair; a waterfall of gold. There is a dark blue fly on the table, and the moment she enters the room it takes off, flying like a lost child. She passes me, speaking with her eyes. My legs are burning. She walks to another part of the room. I had no time to see how she is dressed. There is a wall between my eyes and her. Thin. I could blow it away with my mind. She walks back, heading my direction. Stops half way. Undressed. She stands near a cupboard, a few metres from me. She impresses me. Outside, the future is humiliated. She curves her body, her arm resting on the top of the cupboard, her legs crossed, one of her heels curved upwards. She knows her classics. I could liberate her from her pose. Paradise is just a few steps away. To stand here, watching her, seeing her breathe and shape her body, makes me want to be air. “I can never love you,” she says. “I could never hurt you.” She sounds sure but feels unclear. There are shadows between the words, shadows that behave like time stretching endlessly. Words can create such a feeling of powerless. Still, I feel more than I can see or hear. + more Today, I am quite immortal. I open my eyes and see a sky full of stars; a landscape that’s totally silent. Wide open. Dark background deepened through the ages. No time. There is no time that can make darkness as deep as this. A thought escapes: this does not exist. It does. Even if I was nothing more than air. I make a meaningless sound. Wait. Make another sound. Not loud, just for myself. I am trying to follow the rhythm of light and dark above me. And wondering: Is the darkness the silence between words or is it the light that represents silence? It makes a completely different rhyme. There is no distance between my eyes and the stars; their light burns my retina. My eyes fly. Anything further than ‘none’ falls off the edge of my vision. The Northern Lights are radiant tonight. It’s as if they are leading the other stars in a flight so fast that movement becomes invisible. How can lack of movement be so moving? I go into the living room. A big space. I see wood that makes a table. The table makes the living room. The living room makes the house. The house makes the street. What if this house decides to move somewhere else? The light outside has decided to shine on some garbage that’s acting silently, hoping to be left alone. I clean, light some candles and think of her and of the last time I saw her. There is a hole in my thinking. A sound. And with it returns the memory I failed to retrieve a second ago. I push a button. A short distance away a door is opening downstairs. A few seconds later she knocks and opens the door of the room, leaving me no time to answer. Long hair; a waterfall of gold. There is a dark blue fly on the table, and the moment she enters the room it takes off, flying like a lost child. She passes me, speaking with her eyes. My legs are burning. She walks to another part of the room. I had no time to see how she is dressed. There is a wall between my eyes and her. Thin. I could blow it away with my mind. She walks back, heading my direction. Stops half way. Undressed. She stands near a cupboard, a few metres from me. She impresses me. Outside, the future is humiliated. She curves her body, her arm resting on the top of the cupboard, her legs crossed, one of her heels curved upwards. She knows her classics. I could liberate her from her pose. Paradise is just a few steps away. To stand here, watching her, seeing her breathe and shape her body, makes me want to be air. “I can never love you,” she says. “I could never hurt you.” She sounds sure but feels unclear. There are shadows between the words, shadows that behave like time stretching endlessly. Words can create such a feeling of powerless. Still, I feel more than I can see or hear. The fly is back on the table; it knows it belongs there, for now. With those few words she has erected a whole world between us. I wait: which of us will give the word ‘distance’ another meaning. Two steps, three, and a small one. Behind her back it’s the wood that disappears first, followed by the table, the room, the house and finally the street. It is snowing in summer. I feel I am not nothing, not anything, but that I am alive. I once bought a little box in a Chinese shop near my house. It was the size of a small button. When I opened it, stars appeared. I took them out, one by one, right hand placing them in the palm of my left. As I did so I was thinking what to do with them. After some time I still had no clue. I decided to put them back. The man who sold me the box, a tall dark guy, certainly not Chinese, said that the box held a secret. The box weighed next to nothing. I look at her: I can see that darkness and light are both silence and sound simultaneously. Her hands are tight to the sky. “What are you afraid of?” She becomes transparent. She falls off the edge of my vision but I know she is still there. “Can love cause pain?” she says without asking. “Are you in pain?” I ask. She giggles and I read: Not after the moments just gone. “Are you sure you are not in pain?” I ask. She stops giggling and moves her head in confirmation. Serious now, as serious as a little child. I call for the sky and the stars to be my judge – the Northern Lights are beside me, already here. - less tagged:   body   stars   mind   life   darkness   love   fear    permalink  read: 5739  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

Motherless Child by Andre Platteel , March 3rd

She was having difficulty breathing – the crises always came at night. She awoke and suddenly she knew what was going on: her dreams had shrunk. For days she had measured them while dreaming and she was sure of it. What, for weeks now, she had expected to happen, had happened: her dreams had become smaller. In that particular dream, that particular night, she had heard a noise in her mind: the disturbing beginning of dreamtime. And despite being asleep, she was aware that the sound hadn’t come from outside; it had come from within the dream. She followed the sound. She left the space she was in and stepped into a forest. The sound was doing strange things to her. Movements in her body like waves. Salt water. Foam. The sky hanging above the trees was heavy. Graphical. A dark Mondriaan. The trees tall, standing tight. No horizon, just tree upon tree with leaves like needles, trying to hurt. As she walked, she felt her feet becoming light and the sensation of her body becoming white from the inside. Spacious, not weightless. And not empty either. The space within her grew. She felt the needle-like leaves gathering around her heart. “There is no longer any difference between outside and inside,” she thought. And knew that there had never been a difference between the two. And that knowing was not part of the dream. She followed the sound; felt increasingly disorientated as she did so. She was getting lost, for sure. But the sound was too seductive to stop and turn back. She thought she was ready to lose everything. “Am I?” a voice asked. The forest became darker, her insides whiter – and still she felt not the slightest difference between inside and out. Deeper in the forest she lost track of herself, just as the noise became louder. She had listened, carefully: the noise was close. She took silent steps so the sound would not move. Closer. About to catch it now. Hands in the form of a cup. Then the realisation that she has invaded her own heart. No entrance. Guided by leaves. Awake. A dark room. Where’s the light switch? The space is hot. Moist. Damp bodies. A woman scrubbing our flesh. Clay. I watch my small, dreaming girl. She stands in the middle. On one foot; swopping to the other every few seconds. The floor is too hot. The woman pours water over her head. Two feet now, to deal with the weight of the water. To soak her feet in. Her long blond hair hangs straight down, covering her face and breasts. Drops trace her body, all the way to her feet. Long feet. But small. Long body. Swan. + more She was having difficulty breathing – the crises always came at night. She awoke and suddenly she knew what was going on: her dreams had shrunk. For days she had measured them while dreaming and she was sure of it. What, for weeks now, she had expected to happen, had happened: her dreams had become smaller. In that particular dream, that particular night, she had heard a noise in her mind: the disturbing beginning of dreamtime. And despite being asleep, she was aware that the sound hadn’t come from outside; it had come from within the dream. She followed the sound. She left the space she was in and stepped into a forest. The sound was doing strange things to her. Movements in her body like waves. Salt water. Foam. The sky hanging above the trees was heavy. Graphical. A dark Mondriaan. The trees tall, standing tight. No horizon, just tree upon tree with leaves like needles, trying to hurt. As she walked, she felt her feet becoming light and the sensation of her body becoming white from the inside. Spacious, not weightless. And not empty either. The space within her grew. She felt the needle-like leaves gathering around her heart. “There is no longer any difference between outside and inside,” she thought. And knew that there had never been a difference between the two. And that knowing was not part of the dream. She followed the sound; felt increasingly disorientated as she did so. She was getting lost, for sure. But the sound was too seductive to stop and turn back. She thought she was ready to lose everything. “Am I?” a voice asked. The forest became darker, her insides whiter – and still she felt not the slightest difference between inside and out. Deeper in the forest she lost track of herself, just as the noise became louder. She had listened, carefully: the noise was close. She took silent steps so the sound would not move. Closer. About to catch it now. Hands in the form of a cup. Then the realisation that she has invaded her own heart. No entrance. Guided by leaves. Awake. A dark room. Where’s the light switch? The space is hot. Moist. Damp bodies. A woman scrubbing our flesh. Clay. I watch my small, dreaming girl. She stands in the middle. On one foot; swopping to the other every few seconds. The floor is too hot. The woman pours water over her head. Two feet now, to deal with the weight of the water. To soak her feet in. Her long blond hair hangs straight down, covering her face and breasts. Drops trace her body, all the way to her feet. Long feet. But small. Long body. Swan. She tells me about her dream. “Not quite small.” But for her it is. Her dreams had always been endless. But recent dreams had stopped. Suddenly. Ended in a jolt. So hard, she felt asleep while awake. We change places, she on a chair, me on hot stone. Wet. Clay. Water. Scrub. Red. Purple. She is watching me now. Her body radiates. Snake-like. “I feel lonely,” she says. Steam forms into drops on her cheek. “I cannot understand the way he has left me.” They had made a pact decades ago. Motherless child and he. No more tragedy. Never again pain. A promise. A fairytale. A small version of the horizon. The sun appearing every day. Not a cloud in sight. But horizons change. The surface of the water had rippled. He flew to the other side of the horizon. Picked up another stone. Bound himself with promises of new fairytales. A pebble. Circles rippling out from small to big, the bigger ones becoming less and less distinct. And suddenly no circle left to bind the promise he and little-motherless-girl-with-smaller-dreams had made. He had fallen from her body like a drop of water. “I know that the promise was ridiculous in the first place.” Sometimes you need something to help, even if it later becomes your biggest burden. She sits there, hands on knee, legs crossed, becoming one loop of body. “Turn around please,” the woman says. She scrubs hard. Her arms move quickly in long strokes. She wears a T-shirt with a blue circle and no text. And swimmers. My skin glows. Her face is gentle but stern. No thought of not turning around. My smaller-dreaming girl has her eyes closed. I see her dreaming. I see it because of the steam coming from her head. In her dream she looks into the sun. It is so bright that she has to half close her eyes, only enjoying half of what is visible. The sun puts her in the spotlight. Everyone sees her. Something she had loved many times. This time it’s different. This is no place for her to play and make mistakes. Sometimes you need shade to really enjoy the sun. She wants to walk away. A strong wind puts her back in the centre again. At noon. The sun at its strongest. And again. Again. She feels lonely and cries to herself, silently. Avoiding, not seeking attention. The sun doesn’t like tears, she thinks. Don’t tears dry quickly in the sun? And while she sits there, her hands before her eyes, hiding, not seeing anything anymore, she hears that sound again. She knows what it is now and that nothing can stop her finding it. She is concentrating on entering her own heart now; the leaves are just a pleasant place to take to the shade when the heat of her heart is too hot. “Stand up please.” I get up, a bit dizzy, wiggling legs, water bringing me back down to the ground. And through the flow of water I see her enjoying her dream. An endless dream, I guess. - less tagged:   dream   leaves   sun   tears   promise   horizon   stone   swan   life   body   endless    permalink  read: 5746  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

Growing younger by Andre Platteel , February 20th

The photographer was writing his memoirs. He had gathered up all the work he still owned and offered them for sale in a little gallery in a city he had lived in for many years, more than two decades ago – back in the time when his work was still considered art, not something for which you could be convicted. He felt old, not because of his age, but because of the culture he was living in. Our paths crossed by chance. My girlfriend and I decided to go to Paris. A spur-of-the-moment decision that took us to the railway station, and five hours later, the City of Light. We only had one day, so we decided not to sleep but to wander through neighbourhoods we had never visited before. In a small area full of bookshops, art galleries and little hotels, we stopped in front of a window, our attention caught because it revealed nothing, curtains forming a wall of dark-coloured cloth. The door was open and a white-haired older man with young twinkling eyes stood in the passage. He seemed pleasant. Without saying so, he asked us to come in. We hesitated; our eyes focused on what there was to see inside. No people, just small photographs with little lights above them, so you could see what was being displayed. We went in and began walking past the photographs: portraits of girls – or were they young woman? – posing innocently, supposedly unintentionally exposing parts of their bodies. The girls were not completely naked. And the poses were not pornographic. The photos gave the impression that what was portrayed had occurred by accident. There was a photograph of a girl eating an apple while her dress was casually falling open; a photograph of a girl arranging flowers while wearing see-through pyjamas; a photograph of two girls practicing ballet without wearing tops. Cliché-like scenes; soft-coloured, soft-focused images. The pictures appeared to be innocent. The girls posed as if unaware of the sexual connotations of their nakedness, as if their nakedness was nothing but natural. It was like they were saying: “Moments ago, my body was that of a child no-one paid attention to; suddenly it appears to have become an object of desire, something I can do nothing about.” Somehow I felt ashamed of looking: I felt like a voyeur being aroused by forbidden fruit. The girls were no older than twelve or thirteen. I wasn’t allowed to see this, was I? At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I felt aroused. Because of that, I didn’t know how to react. Could I take my time looking at the photographs or should I pass quickly by? What was I going to say to my girlfriend, also looking at the photos? Could I confess what the pictures were doing to me? And what, exactly, was seducing me? + more The photographer was writing his memoirs. He had gathered up all the work he still owned and offered them for sale in a little gallery in a city he had lived in for many years, more than two decades ago – back in the time when his work was still considered art, not something for which you could be convicted. He felt old, not because of his age, but because of the culture he was living in. Our paths crossed by chance. My girlfriend and I decided to go to Paris. A spur-of-the-moment decision that took us to the railway station, and five hours later, the City of Light. We only had one day, so we decided not to sleep but to wander through neighbourhoods we had never visited before. In a small area full of bookshops, art galleries and little hotels, we stopped in front of a window, our attention caught because it revealed nothing, curtains forming a wall of dark-coloured cloth. The door was open and a white-haired older man with young twinkling eyes stood in the passage. He seemed pleasant. Without saying so, he asked us to come in. We hesitated; our eyes focused on what there was to see inside. No people, just small photographs with little lights above them, so you could see what was being displayed. We went in and began walking past the photographs: portraits of girls – or were they young woman? – posing innocently, supposedly unintentionally exposing parts of their bodies. The girls were not completely naked. And the poses were not pornographic. The photos gave the impression that what was portrayed had occurred by accident. There was a photograph of a girl eating an apple while her dress was casually falling open; a photograph of a girl arranging flowers while wearing see-through pyjamas; a photograph of two girls practicing ballet without wearing tops. Cliché-like scenes; soft-coloured, soft-focused images. The pictures appeared to be innocent. The girls posed as if unaware of the sexual connotations of their nakedness, as if their nakedness was nothing but natural. It was like they were saying: “Moments ago, my body was that of a child no-one paid attention to; suddenly it appears to have become an object of desire, something I can do nothing about.” Somehow I felt ashamed of looking: I felt like a voyeur being aroused by forbidden fruit. The girls were no older than twelve or thirteen. I wasn’t allowed to see this, was I? At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I felt aroused. Because of that, I didn’t know how to react. Could I take my time looking at the photographs or should I pass quickly by? What was I going to say to my girlfriend, also looking at the photos? Could I confess what the pictures were doing to me? And what, exactly, was seducing me? Seduction lay not only in the girls’ nakedness: I see more bare flesh on primetime TV. What had hit me were the girls’ expressions. They did not seduce the way a fully sexually conscious woman would. The look in the girls’ eyes showed they were coming from pure innocence, beginning to becoming aware of a new world opening up with and through their bodies. Becoming aware of an impending fullness of life. Theirs was an expression of naïve innocence, as if they were eternally impervious; I was being seduced by a pure, clear power that was flowing straight to my heart. It was neither intrusive nor clearly visible. Despite their obviously staged poses the connection felt natural – so natural that I almost forgot what natural is actually all about. It was virginity that was arousing me. Not the girls’ sexual virginity, but their life virginity. As if they were on the point of encountering a new wellspring of life – as if life itself was about to unfold in them. Isn’t that what being young is all about, I thought: fresh encounters with things that make us feel more fully alive? Isn’t that what we are looking for our entire lives: a means to make love with life itself that will deepen our relationship with others and ourselves in the most intimate way? And is the fear of becoming older, I sometimes experience, actually the fear of losing this virginity – the fear of losing openness to encountering life afresh and anew? As we are about to leave the old man walked up to us. He introduced himself as the photographer. I knew his name: a celebrity two decades ago, now an outlaw. “You know,” he starts, “I don’t know how to express it exactly, but somehow these girls have made me grow younger.” A minute later my girlfriend and I were back outside the gallery, adjusting our eyes to the sunlight. - less tagged:   innocence   consciousness   body   life   photographer   virginity   youth   connectedness   pornographic   Paris   shame    permalink  read: 5964  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

The outer layer of the mind by Andre Platteel , February 15th

I get out of the plane. No corridor to greet me, just stairs down to the tarmac. Quite a walk. Kerosene, citrus, rubber, sweat. Once through passport control I see someone holding my name. I drive with him through the night, into the desert. Many stars above us; more and more as my eyes adjust to the darkness. I can see deeper, with each breath expanding what is above me. The key to my room is red. A large sitting area. Lavender, dates, roses, mint, honey. Walls plastered with red leather and dark grey tadelakt. Transparent, off-white cotton curtains, deliberately too long. A soft desert breeze through a half-open shutter turns them into vertical waves. A large bath opposite the bed. Grapefruit, lemongrass, oranges. I’m hungry. Food on the roof terrace. Below, the city square. Pillars of smoke. At least a thousand food stalls. The faded sound of knives, magicians and storytellers. Someone is bringing my food. Greens and browns. Couscous, aubergine, nuts, olives, pumpkin mouse. “Just arrived, Sir?” The next day his hands mould my body. Clay, steam, Argan oil. In my calf, the sural nerve shoots pain. No softness, no relaxation. My body as raw material. As he’s not relaxing me, I try to relax into the pain he is causing. His head near my ear, he whispers in a strong voice: “What are you stressed about, Sir?” Eucalyptus, calendula, peppermint. Cover-ups for urine, vomit, blood, fear. “It is all here.” He touches my stomach. “You thought it was here”, he puts his hand on my neck, “here”, hand on lower back, “and here”. His fingers again press into my sural. “But it is all here.” He giggles, puts me on my right side for a few seconds and then back on my back. I feel transparent to him. And more. Butterfly light. “I want you to relax maximum now.” No touching or pressing. He leaves the room. A splash of sunlight blindfolds me. Potatoes, grease, green peas, coffee, nicotine, sugar, beer. I see someone vague, then familiar; someone I haven’t seen for a long time; someone I have known so well; someone I have been longing for. He hasn’t grown older. Of course not. I follow him through the rooms of a house I also once knew well but seem to have forgotten. The house feels new to me now. Because of him. Maybe. + more I get out of the plane. No corridor to greet me, just stairs down to the tarmac. Quite a walk. Kerosene, citrus, rubber, sweat. Once through passport control I see someone holding my name. I drive with him through the night, into the desert. Many stars above us; more and more as my eyes adjust to the darkness. I can see deeper, with each breath expanding what is above me. The key to my room is red. A large sitting area. Lavender, dates, roses, mint, honey. Walls plastered with red leather and dark grey tadelakt. Transparent, off-white cotton curtains, deliberately too long. A soft desert breeze through a half-open shutter turns them into vertical waves. A large bath opposite the bed. Grapefruit, lemongrass, oranges. I’m hungry. Food on the roof terrace. Below, the city square. Pillars of smoke. At least a thousand food stalls. The faded sound of knives, magicians and storytellers. Someone is bringing my food. Greens and browns. Couscous, aubergine, nuts, olives, pumpkin mouse. “Just arrived, Sir?” The next day his hands mould my body. Clay, steam, Argan oil. In my calf, the sural nerve shoots pain. No softness, no relaxation. My body as raw material. As he’s not relaxing me, I try to relax into the pain he is causing. His head near my ear, he whispers in a strong voice: “What are you stressed about, Sir?” Eucalyptus, calendula, peppermint. Cover-ups for urine, vomit, blood, fear. “It is all here.” He touches my stomach. “You thought it was here”, he puts his hand on my neck, “here”, hand on lower back, “and here”. His fingers again press into my sural. “But it is all here.” He giggles, puts me on my right side for a few seconds and then back on my back. I feel transparent to him. And more. Butterfly light. “I want you to relax maximum now.” No touching or pressing. He leaves the room. A splash of sunlight blindfolds me. Potatoes, grease, green peas, coffee, nicotine, sugar, beer. I see someone vague, then familiar; someone I haven’t seen for a long time; someone I have known so well; someone I have been longing for. He hasn’t grown older. Of course not. I follow him through the rooms of a house I also once knew well but seem to have forgotten. The house feels new to me now. Because of him. Maybe. He lifts the tablecloth so I can see what is underneath the table. Canyons, horses, desert, nomads, fire, fish. He walks to a bedroom: the room we shared almost twenty years ago. He directs me to look under the bed. A fox, an eagle, flying people. We walk to the dining room. The house is small and I feel too big for it. I have to bend my back to move around. A chess board. Odd. We didn’t play chess. One King remains. White. He grabs a black pawn, puts it on the board and hits the King from a position that normally poses no threat. He lets me see what is under the dining table. Stars, comets, flowing water, a heart breathing without a body. He lifts up the carpet the dining table is resting on: gazelles are escaping. Under the carpet lie stairs that he wants me to take. I enter the darkness. I want him to follow me. It is too dark to see him behind me. I am in my own house now. Much bigger than the one I used to live in with him and others. He is no longer there. I can see the lines of my house, as if it is painted and I am outside, watching it. It is big, yes, but like a painting, it has a frame. The house is restricted. I pick up a carpet: an elephant being chased and eaten by lions – something they don’t normally do. I don’t have to look further: although I don’t know what to expect, I know it can be anything once I let go of the limitations of my ‘house’. “This is good. This is maximum relaxation.” My head is resting in his big hands. It feels like a peanut. His eyes are close to mine. His words don’t come from his mouth. “Now you choose for this life. Choosing this life is letting go of old life. Please swear me not to stress anymore. It is no use.” He lets me swear two times, the second one comprehensively. His hands are caressing my body, tenderly; not erotically but faithfully. “Your body is the outer part of your mind. Clear your mind. Let no thoughts hold your mind; let your mind hold just one thought: to choose this life fully.” Sulphur, swan, snow. Silence. Surrender. - less tagged:   Butterfly   mind   body   erotic   faith   life   stress   space   house   plane   travel    permalink  read: 5703  print  forward  comments: 2  add comment      name:  Tom, February 16th • Heavy, beautiful, clear, dangerous. Spark. Greta, February 15th • This is quite beautiful. The listings of sensations woven throughout are like little poems. I love the way the past is suggested but not revealed. Tha... + more Greta, February 15th • This is quite beautiful. The listings of sensations woven throughout are like little poems. I love the way the past is suggested but not revealed. Thank you. - less

Photo: André Platteel

Glass-made-mind by Andre Platteel , February 10th

It was one of those days in which normality seems to have gone on sabbatical. Two heavy bags hung from my bicycle’s handlebars and just as I was about to take one of them off the bike slipped from my grasp, the handle of the bag broke and the bag crashed to the ground. The bicycle followed, landing on top of the bag less than a second later. Glass. In pieces. A vase I’d bought less than an hour earlier. “Where are you going to put it?” the sales person had asked. “On the table,” I replied. “And what do you think the flowers will think about, when they are in the vase on the table?” I had no idea what he was on about. “Is it possible that the flowers will think they are standing on the table, not in a vase that is on the table? The glass is really high quality, you know. The flowers might make a mistake and look through the glass and become convinced that they are standing on the table.” “Is that a good thing?” I had asked him. “How clearly do you want to see? Do you know what you’re standing on? Come and have a look at something…” I followed him as he went to one of the dozens of vases of flowers that filled the shop. It was a beautiful vase; a bigger version of the one I had just bought. It had orchids in it. Orchids aren’t my thing. But now that I looked closely I realised it was probably the name I didn’t like. A beautiful yellow and green specimen with lots of sensual branches drew me into another world. “Now, see for yourself how clear the glass is and how quickly the mistake can be made. To me it’s not a small mistake but a big one, and it’s so logical that it’s made over and over again. You cannot imagine how important it is that the flowers know they are standing in the vase. Knowing what they stand in is of the greatest importance. I should say that it is essential that they know what sustains them and keeps them together. Maybe to know what it is that keeps them prisoner. I tell them time and time again that they are in a vase and not on the table, but they’re not good at remembering things, you know. The flowers. They’re not very good at remembering. Too busy flowering. And who’s to tell them they’re wrong.” I place the other bag, which I had already taken off the bike, on the ground. I inspect the damage to the stuff in the one that fell. The vase is indeed broken. It wouldn’t be so bad if the flowers did believe they were standing on the table and that I could put them on it, I think to myself. I put the broken-glass-filled bag next to the other, turn the key in the lock of my front door, open it, pick up the bags again and prepare to go inside. My senses twitch. Someone walking past, slowing down. My bike – I haven’t locked it. Forgotten in all the slipping, falling and dropping. I shove the bags inside and walk quickly back to my bike. The guy is 30 or so. Worn out jeans and jacket too thin for the time of year. Looks tired – probably not slept for days, I guess – bottle of beer in his left hand. “I’d put the other lock on as well, man; that one’s useless.” Checked out. No shame. I take his advice and put the lock and chain that’s currently wrapped under the saddle and thread it through the frame and front wheel. “What did you think: that guy’s gonna take my bike?” About to answer. “Yeah, well, you saw that right,” he says first. I can’t see if there’s still any beer in the bottle. The glass is brown. I want to head back inside, but he’s in front of me. With words. + more It was one of those days in which normality seems to have gone on sabbatical. Two heavy bags hung from my bicycle’s handlebars and just as I was about to take one of them off the bike slipped from my grasp, the handle of the bag broke and the bag crashed to the ground. The bicycle followed, landing on top of the bag less than a second later. Glass. In pieces. A vase I’d bought less than an hour earlier. “Where are you going to put it?” the sales person had asked. “On the table,” I replied. “And what do you think the flowers will think about, when they are in the vase on the table?” I had no idea what he was on about. “Is it possible that the flowers will think they are standing on the table, not in a vase that is on the table? The glass is really high quality, you know. The flowers might make a mistake and look through the glass and become convinced that they are standing on the table.” “Is that a good thing?” I had asked him. “How clearly do you want to see? Do you know what you’re standing on? Come and have a look at something…” I followed him as he went to one of the dozens of vases of flowers that filled the shop. It was a beautiful vase; a bigger version of the one I had just bought. It had orchids in it. Orchids aren’t my thing. But now that I looked closely I realised it was probably the name I didn’t like. A beautiful yellow and green specimen with lots of sensual branches drew me into another world. “Now, see for yourself how clear the glass is and how quickly the mistake can be made. To me it’s not a small mistake but a big one, and it’s so logical that it’s made over and over again. You cannot imagine how important it is that the flowers know they are standing in the vase. Knowing what they stand in is of the greatest importance. I should say that it is essential that they know what sustains them and keeps them together. Maybe to know what it is that keeps them prisoner. I tell them time and time again that they are in a vase and not on the table, but they’re not good at remembering things, you know. The flowers. They’re not very good at remembering. Too busy flowering. And who’s to tell them they’re wrong.” I place the other bag, which I had already taken off the bike, on the ground. I inspect the damage to the stuff in the one that fell. The vase is indeed broken. It wouldn’t be so bad if the flowers did believe they were standing on the table and that I could put them on it, I think to myself. I put the broken-glass-filled bag next to the other, turn the key in the lock of my front door, open it, pick up the bags again and prepare to go inside. My senses twitch. Someone walking past, slowing down. My bike – I haven’t locked it. Forgotten in all the slipping, falling and dropping. I shove the bags inside and walk quickly back to my bike. The guy is 30 or so. Worn out jeans and jacket too thin for the time of year. Looks tired – probably not slept for days, I guess – bottle of beer in his left hand. “I’d put the other lock on as well, man; that one’s useless.” Checked out. No shame. I take his advice and put the lock and chain that’s currently wrapped under the saddle and thread it through the frame and front wheel. “What did you think: that guy’s gonna take my bike?” About to answer. “Yeah, well, you saw that right,” he says first. I can’t see if there’s still any beer in the bottle. The glass is brown. I want to head back inside, but he’s in front of me. With words. “Look, I’ve been carrying this around for weeks.” He pulls out an envelope from inside his jacket. “They know that I do this, that I’m here, you know. I’m too afraid to open it. I’m ashamed man. You understand?” Silence for a moment. “Do you believe in God?” he asks. I tell him what I believe in and ask him if he believes. “I want to believe. But I fall back again and again believing in something that is destroying me. I know it is destroying me. Yes. I’ll tell you honestly, do you know how I get my money to buy drugs? By taking things.” He points to my bike. He takes another drink. So there was some left. “What’s stopping you from stopping, if you want to?” “If I knew that, man. If I could see that." A car drives by, fast, too fast. "You know, I have qualifications. I worked with liquids in sterile rooms. That’s how I got my first gear.” We stand there. Neighbours go in through the doorway we share. I apologize to them for the bags that are placed inconveniently in the hallway. “What are in the bags?” I tell him about the broken vase. He looks at the glass containing his beer, if there’s any still in it. “You know, if you put this bottle under a microscope the bottle doesn’t have a fixed shape – it moves. Everything vibrates and moves. And there’s lots of space between the bits that vibrate. And despite this the beer stays in the bottle and doesn’t leak out. Bizarre, huh? And you know why that is?” I know there’s no point me trying to come up with a scientific answer: I don’t know enough about that kind of thing. No doubt he knows a lot more than me, and, anyway, I have the feeling that that’s not what he means. “Because the glass convinces. The glass is so convincing that the beer doesn’t even think of escaping.” He tells me his name is Michel and before we say goodbye he apologises and asks, “Any chance of some change?” I’ll buy food with it. Really.” - less tagged:   space   mind   God   darkness   life    permalink  read: 4172  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

The eagle and the condor flying together by Andre Platteel , January 23rd

There are four of us, maybe six. It feels completely dark. The only light comes from the sky: thousands of stars and a sliver of moon reaching to the earth. Yet even though the sky above me is clear, the heavens still don’t provide enough light for me to see my immediate surroundings. Although we have walked this path along this amazing coastline at least a dozen times over the last five days, most of us carry flashlights. The near abyss is magnetic. I am having a lazy time in the place that gave birth to the Human Potential Movement, back in the early Sixties. Actually, the Sixties never stopped. There are people gardening naked; the food comes from little gardens within the compound; girls are painting flowers on the walls of buildings; in the evening we gather around a fire outside and those people with guitars play Fleetwood Mac, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Bob Dylan. I went hiking through the wilderness the other day. The sky changed second by second. I walked through rain, in the sun, through storm and even snow, all in no more than half an hour. I felt like Hugh Grant near the end of Notting Hill, with a bit of Indiana Jones thrown in. I tried to find my way through the tall trees and wild bushes. There was no path. Then, the moment the wilderness opened up a bit, my eyes met those of three huge, powerful birds. They stared and shifted their long, thin necks in my direction. They spread their wings – at least six feet wide, I guess – not to take off but to impress on me how big they were. At first, fear stiffened my body. I tried to relax and backed off a bit, still looking into the eyes of these creatures. Condors. I had read in a guide that they used to live here, but had not been seen since the end of the Sixties. Had they been hiding since then, or had they returned? Watching these Condors, I felt a strange otherness I had never encountered before. I felt so alive. Sometimes it takes otherness to remind us what we are made off. + more There are four of us, maybe six. It feels completely dark. The only light comes from the sky: thousands of stars and a sliver of moon reaching to the earth. Yet even though the sky above me is clear, the heavens still don’t provide enough light for me to see my immediate surroundings. Although we have walked this path along this amazing coastline at least a dozen times over the last five days, most of us carry flashlights. The near abyss is magnetic. I am having a lazy time in the place that gave birth to the Human Potential Movement, back in the early Sixties. Actually, the Sixties never stopped. There are people gardening naked; the food comes from little gardens within the compound; girls are painting flowers on the walls of buildings; in the evening we gather around a fire outside and those people with guitars play Fleetwood Mac, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Bob Dylan. I went hiking through the wilderness the other day. The sky changed second by second. I walked through rain, in the sun, through storm and even snow, all in no more than half an hour. I felt like Hugh Grant near the end of Notting Hill, with a bit of Indiana Jones thrown in. I tried to find my way through the tall trees and wild bushes. There was no path. Then, the moment the wilderness opened up a bit, my eyes met those of three huge, powerful birds. They stared and shifted their long, thin necks in my direction. They spread their wings – at least six feet wide, I guess – not to take off but to impress on me how big they were. At first, fear stiffened my body. I tried to relax and backed off a bit, still looking into the eyes of these creatures. Condors. I had read in a guide that they used to live here, but had not been seen since the end of the Sixties. Had they been hiding since then, or had they returned? Watching these Condors, I felt a strange otherness I had never encountered before. I felt so alive. Sometimes it takes otherness to remind us what we are made off. In the darkeness I tell about my encounter with the birds to the four (or is it six) others I’m with. A girl’s voice reacts. I recognize an Esalen-girl I had met earlier and who has lived here all her life. She says that the area is known for eagles and that the condors left decades ago. An Esalen legend tells that when the eagle and condor fly together peace will descend on Earth. Light will defeat darkness. The moment she finishes her story, we all look up into the sky, our attention grabbed by a huge fire high above. Something’s burning. An enormous fire, blazing away, the seconds dragging by. We stop and watch. We don’t speak. It can’t be a plane crash – it’s too high up and too intense. And it’s burning too long. You can see whatever it is trying to reach through the earth’s atmosphere. The fire crackles and bangs. It makes the normally invisible atmosphere visible. Watching the mysterious fire I find myself in the same situation as when I was eye to eye with the condors. Primal fear invades my body. My mind is posing questions that make me feel small: Just how little do we know of the place the fire comes from? How little do we know of the Earth as part of that? How little do I know about myself as part of all this? I feel vulnerable and mortal. Suddenly I feel the fire I see above burning inside me. As if there is no longer any difference between outside and inside. Vulnerability and mortality going up in flames, creating a huge fire. Earth, the Heavens and I are burning, too, but are not destroyed. There is only aliveness. Sometimes it takes fire to show us that what we are is always burning, and always will be. - less tagged:   fire   fear   life   heart   Eagle   Condor   light   darkness   Esalen   sky   understanding   spaciousness   reality    permalink  read: 7373  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

To make two mountains one, gone by Andre Platteel , December 21st

He knew he had to go. His feet felt light. He was losing ground. That night he had prayed for a young man to come. In his prayer he had asked for someone he could teach his understanding to. He had not seen anyone for years. Most people don’t want to be in this hot, deserted land. He could see as far as his eyes could see without seeing anything but sand. And two mountains. But in the bright sunlight they seemed to be no more than a trick of perception. Away on the left and away on the right the mountains looked like two vague shadows staring out into the endless nothingness, the same nothingness that made him feel so full. The two mountains were part of a legend. He had heard the legend many times, when people interested in knowing life still visited him. Although he had never seen the mountains up close, one mountain was said to have a big hole slightly above the middle and to the left. The other mountain was said to have vertical stripes as if it was divided into different parts. The legend tells of a woman who had fallen in love with two men, brothers. The moment the brothers knew they loved the same woman, their love turned into hate. In the battle that followed, one of the brothers was wounded, slashed by a knife. Just before life left his body he managed to plunge his knife into the heart of the one whose blood he knew so well. Both brothers died and the woman cried so much that a river was created, connecting the two mountains. The river dried up long before he came to live there, more than fifty years ago. He was making tea when someone knocked at the door. A young man. He asked him in and they walked to a small table with two chairs. The fire was on. At this time of year the desert was cold. “It is said you can turn the two mountains into one,” the young man said by way of introduction, pointing through the window to the two vague mountains that seemed to be at the far end of an endless nothingness. The old man didn’t respond, not yet. “I want you to show me how you do it. Here...” He opened his hand and showed the old man his money, all the money he had saved, probably taking years. “Who are you to come into my house and to ask to trade my knowledge for money?” “It is said that in making two mountains one, the mystery of life becomes known”, the young man continued. “Why do you want to know?” “Because I want to know life!” + more He knew he had to go. His feet felt light. He was losing ground. That night he had prayed for a young man to come. In his prayer he had asked for someone he could teach his understanding to. He had not seen anyone for years. Most people don’t want to be in this hot, deserted land. He could see as far as his eyes could see without seeing anything but sand. And two mountains. But in the bright sunlight they seemed to be no more than a trick of perception. Away on the left and away on the right the mountains looked like two vague shadows staring out into the endless nothingness, the same nothingness that made him feel so full. The two mountains were part of a legend. He had heard the legend many times, when people interested in knowing life still visited him. Although he had never seen the mountains up close, one mountain was said to have a big hole slightly above the middle and to the left. The other mountain was said to have vertical stripes as if it was divided into different parts. The legend tells of a woman who had fallen in love with two men, brothers. The moment the brothers knew they loved the same woman, their love turned into hate. In the battle that followed, one of the brothers was wounded, slashed by a knife. Just before life left his body he managed to plunge his knife into the heart of the one whose blood he knew so well. Both brothers died and the woman cried so much that a river was created, connecting the two mountains. The river dried up long before he came to live there, more than fifty years ago. He was making tea when someone knocked at the door. A young man. He asked him in and they walked to a small table with two chairs. The fire was on. At this time of year the desert was cold. “It is said you can turn the two mountains into one,” the young man said by way of introduction, pointing through the window to the two vague mountains that seemed to be at the far end of an endless nothingness. The old man didn’t respond, not yet. “I want you to show me how you do it. Here...” He opened his hand and showed the old man his money, all the money he had saved, probably taking years. “Who are you to come into my house and to ask to trade my knowledge for money?” “It is said that in making two mountains one, the mystery of life becomes known”, the young man continued. “Why do you want to know?” “Because I want to know life!” “You can know life’s mystery,” the old man responded, “but will you understand it? What is the use of showing you? If I showed you life’s mystery you would never believe me.” “But is it true, can you make those two mountain one? Please take my money, and show it to me.” “If I turn two into one, your whole life will change. Do you really want that?” The old man poured the tea he had just made into two glasses; he drank his tea and somehow knew that the young man would leave before he had drunk from his own glass. “I need to know the mystery. If I know the mystery I can finally live. I will finally be free.” The old man was silent; he knew he would have to pray again that night. He opened the door and asked the young man to leave. The young man grew aggressive and threw his money on the ground. “You are a swindler. I should have listened to all the others who have visited you and who warned me that you are nothing more than a madman.” The old man closed the door. He walked back to the fire and finished his tea. He thought about the young man. He had felt the confusion of removing life from a life lived, turning one into two. But in his heart he knew the young man was whole, one. In the far distance the two mountains seemed to have disappeared. But this could easily have been a trick of the sunlight. - less tagged:   wholeness   understanding   life   desert   sun    permalink  read: 3643  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

Oneness is never the same by Andre Platteel , November 29th

I have to wait for transport. Around here, waiting for transport can take hours. So I try to get rid of the feeling of ‘waiting.’ At a certain point I need to go to the toilet. I find it behind a small square building with no doors. Instead of a water tank, the toilet has a straight pipe that goes into a beautiful river that I can see through the broken wooden floor. Walking back I come a cross a strange object: an installation made out of various materials that were probably found by the road or in one of the dumps that are on almost every corner, including next to the most beautiful Roman, Greek and Ottoman remains. The installation has been created from various objects made from metal, wood, wire and stone. I have no idea what the purpose of this installation is. In a museum it could easily be the creation of a Dadaist, but here I doubt that it has been made from an artistic perspective. Although the object has many pieces that seem to have been picked at random, the object feels coherent, which makes it feel like one piece: as if the combined materials have begun a second, new life. It must be about ten years ago that I was invited to give a presentation at the Arthur Andersen training centre near Chicago. When I arrived it was obvious that I didn’t conform to the Arthur Andersen dress code – and my haircut was way out of line. Every man there wore a dark blue suit, a dark tie and black shoes. I wasn’t. Every man wore his hair short; mine was quite long. Because of this, the conference organizer advised me to stop by a tailor and get a haircut. Easy: both shops were part of the Arthur Andersen compound. At the barbershop, the barber didn’t ask what I wanted, so I asked him how he would cut my hair. He smiled, walked back to a desk, opened a drawer and took out a sketch of a man who looked just like the many men I had already encountered at the centre. In the middle of my house there’s a big table, about four metres long. It has many chairs around it, which I have collected over the years. Most of the chairs don’t match. But you can sit on all of them. And all the chairs are recognizably chairs because in some way they reflect the concept we have created of what a chair is all about. + more I have to wait for transport. Around here, waiting for transport can take hours. So I try to get rid of the feeling of ‘waiting.’ At a certain point I need to go to the toilet. I find it behind a small square building with no doors. Instead of a water tank, the toilet has a straight pipe that goes into a beautiful river that I can see through the broken wooden floor. Walking back I come a cross a strange object: an installation made out of various materials that were probably found by the road or in one of the dumps that are on almost every corner, including next to the most beautiful Roman, Greek and Ottoman remains. The installation has been created from various objects made from metal, wood, wire and stone. I have no idea what the purpose of this installation is. In a museum it could easily be the creation of a Dadaist, but here I doubt that it has been made from an artistic perspective. Although the object has many pieces that seem to have been picked at random, the object feels coherent, which makes it feel like one piece: as if the combined materials have begun a second, new life. It must be about ten years ago that I was invited to give a presentation at the Arthur Andersen training centre near Chicago. When I arrived it was obvious that I didn’t conform to the Arthur Andersen dress code – and my haircut was way out of line. Every man there wore a dark blue suit, a dark tie and black shoes. I wasn’t. Every man wore his hair short; mine was quite long. Because of this, the conference organizer advised me to stop by a tailor and get a haircut. Easy: both shops were part of the Arthur Andersen compound. At the barbershop, the barber didn’t ask what I wanted, so I asked him how he would cut my hair. He smiled, walked back to a desk, opened a drawer and took out a sketch of a man who looked just like the many men I had already encountered at the centre. In the middle of my house there’s a big table, about four metres long. It has many chairs around it, which I have collected over the years. Most of the chairs don’t match. But you can sit on all of them. And all the chairs are recognizably chairs because in some way they reflect the concept we have created of what a chair is all about. The experience of being all connected creates a feeling of Oneness, ‘all’ being the source of what you can call consciousness, or the divine, or whatever you want to call it. Life? The feeling of Oneness cannot be seen (yet), but can be sensed, somehow. When silent, you can depict it. Most of the time we try to create what we think must be Oneness. Being one can feel strong, as I saw at Arthur Andersen. But this created oneness is not the same as Oneness. At Arthur Andersen, every individual man was modelled as if they were all one and the same, without doing justice to the differences in form and qualities that makes each of us unique (and at the same time One). The underlying longing to create a group that feels ‘one’ actually leads to the opposite of Oneness. It creates a stark division; us and them. And it’s a paradox that is not only found within business communities but also in spiritual communities and social communities – despite the individual's longing to be different somehow, especially and also within the community. I find it very difficult to exemplify the idea that we are unique and One at the same time. Usually, we either look for differences (first) or look for similarities (to conclude). The different chairs in my house, for example, are clearly all chairs. That’s easy to see. Yet we generalize, précis and create a common idea that excludes the differences all chairs have. We ignore what we see and make a mental projection: ‘This is a chair.’ What I liked about the installation near the tank-less toilet was the fact that it demonstrated difference and oneness at the same time. An almost naïve illustration of both, simultaneously. And it did something else to me: it showed me that a thing has different meanings in different moments. Once I have really seen something and understood its simultaneous uniqueness (its difference to something else) and Oneness, this does not mean that it is still the same the next time I see it. Oneness is never the same. - less tagged:   understanding   consciousness   oneness   life   spiritual   business   community    permalink  read: 4046  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

Life has no meaning by Andre Platteel , November 15th

First we drove for four hours - away from the coast heading north. Then we took a three-hour boat ride through narrow waters between high mountains. And after another three hours driving north we arrived in a forgotten valley close to the border of Kosovo. It’s cold and dry. It starts to get dark: it is three o’clock in the afternoon. I grab another sweater from the small bag I’ve been carrying around for weeks now, and pull it over the other two I already have on. I can’t close my coat anymore. The three sweaters won’t compress enough to allow it. I’m wondering what would keep me warmer; two sweaters, coat closed, or three sweaters, coat open? The idea of again having to struggle out of my coat and take off a sweater decides it. Our plan is to spend the night in a house owned by a mother and her daughter, who will cook for us. The house is unusual in this land of only trees and mountains. It is small and coloured brown and yellow. Just like the leaves that have fallen to the ground and now form a crispy carpet under my feet. The moment I go to enter the house, the door opens and a strange animal welcomes us. At first it frightens me: it looks like a dog with big brown eyes, but it also has huge wings, so it cannot be a dog. Then an old lady, the mother no doubt, walks towards us, talking to me in a strange language. She is old - I can see it in the way she walks - but her face is still young. She has skin as bright as snow. My guide tells me to take off my shoes and go in, and to be careful with the bird since it cannot see or hear. I am surprised: despite the size of its wings the bird cannot fly; despite the largeness of its eyes it cannot see. How come the bird cannot use its natural capabilities? Mother and daughter spend almost the whole afternoon preparing dinner: washing vegetables, carefully cutting vegetables, cooking and grilling. The result is delicious – the love put into the preparation adds to the taste. I am being fed wonderfully. After dinner, there doesn’t seem to be anything on offer except darkness. There isn’t any electricity; the little light there is comes from candles, which is too little to read by, should you want to. There is no television, no radio and no urge to talk. It doesn’t quite feel comfortable to me: did these people choose to live here? Why? What is the meaning of their life? I go up to my room before most kids’ bed time, the strange bird following behind me. I close my door as quickly as possible to stop it from entering my room. To the blind, this mustn’t feel impolite, I think to myself. I try to fall asleep. But trying is more than good enough to fall asleep. + more First we drove for four hours - away from the coast heading north. Then we took a three-hour boat ride through narrow waters between high mountains. And after another three hours driving north we arrived in a forgotten valley close to the border of Kosovo. It’s cold and dry. It starts to get dark: it is three o’clock in the afternoon. I grab another sweater from the small bag I’ve been carrying around for weeks now, and pull it over the other two I already have on. I can’t close my coat anymore. The three sweaters won’t compress enough to allow it. I’m wondering what would keep me warmer; two sweaters, coat closed, or three sweaters, coat open? The idea of again having to struggle out of my coat and take off a sweater decides it. Our plan is to spend the night in a house owned by a mother and her daughter, who will cook for us. The house is unusual in this land of only trees and mountains. It is small and coloured brown and yellow. Just like the leaves that have fallen to the ground and now form a crispy carpet under my feet. The moment I go to enter the house, the door opens and a strange animal welcomes us. At first it frightens me: it looks like a dog with big brown eyes, but it also has huge wings, so it cannot be a dog. Then an old lady, the mother no doubt, walks towards us, talking to me in a strange language. She is old - I can see it in the way she walks - but her face is still young. She has skin as bright as snow. My guide tells me to take off my shoes and go in, and to be careful with the bird since it cannot see or hear. I am surprised: despite the size of its wings the bird cannot fly; despite the largeness of its eyes it cannot see. How come the bird cannot use its natural capabilities? Mother and daughter spend almost the whole afternoon preparing dinner: washing vegetables, carefully cutting vegetables, cooking and grilling. The result is delicious – the love put into the preparation adds to the taste. I am being fed wonderfully. After dinner, there doesn’t seem to be anything on offer except darkness. There isn’t any electricity; the little light there is comes from candles, which is too little to read by, should you want to. There is no television, no radio and no urge to talk. It doesn’t quite feel comfortable to me: did these people choose to live here? Why? What is the meaning of their life? I go up to my room before most kids’ bed time, the strange bird following behind me. I close my door as quickly as possible to stop it from entering my room. To the blind, this mustn’t feel impolite, I think to myself. I try to fall asleep. But trying is more than good enough to fall asleep. After what seems like spending forever in darkness, fighting the cold that has invaded my body, wrestling with the question I have fed my mind with (What is the meaning of life in this God-forsaken valley), a sound outside grabs my attention. I move the curtains a bit. Through the window I can see the old lady trying to feed the animal. But the animal seems to have lost its appetite. The bird just sits there staring from darkness into darkness, seeing no more light. For as long as I keep watching through the window, I see the woman trying to feed the animal. The cold doesn’t seem to bother her. I awake to a sound from outside – again. The sun is coming up. A virgin morning that feels strong and bright. The woman is still there, still trying to feed the animal. Has she been there all night? After another wonderful meal, breakfast this time, my guide and I are preparing to leave. I feel sad. Not for myself, but for them. To leave behind the old woman and her daughter in this cold and lonely place. The old woman addresses me. She says I have to feed myself, my guide tells me. “But I do,” I say. She speaks to me again: “Life is all about nourishment." As we drive south, I suddenly understand why the bird cannot use its natural capabilities anymore. It has stopped feeding itself. In a split second, I find the answer to the question that I have fed my brain with: Life has no meaning, because life is beyond meaning – life has to be lived and fed if it is to remain. There is only thing we have to know: what we should feed ourselves with to feel live running through. What is it that will remind us of our natural capacities and give us the ability to see and fly? - less tagged:   consciousness   life   feeding   natural   vitality    permalink  read: 2950  print  forward  comments: 1  add comment      name:  Mikael, November 28th • You've got it! Very nice story, felt the balkans vividly...thanks

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

Act of passion by Andre Platteel , November 10th

It’s cold outside; at least that’s what I read on the monitor. Degrees man can never take. Inside, it feels like a microwave. I haven’t had much sleep. Sleep will not happen high up here, I know. I am too busy fighting. It does not feel natural to be above the clouds. I just read in a scientific journal that high above we are exposed to certain radiation from the sun that the earth normally protects us from. But the journal also says that these results are ‘most likely’. She talks about her brother, about how he loves watching moving things: windmills, records, wheels of bicycles or cars, flushing water. I just met her, an hour before we took off. She is a radiant girl. We will spend the next two weeks in each other’s company. She graduated from art school and wants to be a documentary director. “What kind of documentaries?” She loves to film people with passion. “What is that, passion?” Passion is an unstoppable force doing a certain thing, reaching a certain goal, she says. She tells me she sees life in people with passion, not in the object of passion but in passion itself. I try to think of my own passion. What makes me alive? Already, and for a long time, I seem to have lost a certain passion that belongs to the laws of physics. What to create? Is it necessary to create? Why should I create? I think of the things I used to be passionate about. Actually, most of them turned out to be a form of resistance to things I did not want to experience. I loved collecting books. Now I can see that I needed other stories in order to escape my own. “Does passion makes us alive? Or is passion the ultimate escape from life?” She answers sweet and clear; talks about people who use passion to create and protect a certain truth for themselves. She knows someone who was passionate about bodybuilding. The guy turned out to be afraid for his body, afraid of losing his physique, hence body-building like a madman, including using dope to construct, to de-construct. “But,” she adds, “if passion is an act of giving, one comes alive.” “I know someone who gives a lot,” I reply, “but always with the idea of receiving. He never stops giving, and his friends and loved ones can never give back what he needs in return. With his giving he takes away the space for others to react and be the way they want to be. His giving is a form of control over everyone around him. Even the things he gives that are normally ‘labelled’ love are intended to control.” + more It’s cold outside; at least that’s what I read on the monitor. Degrees man can never take. Inside, it feels like a microwave. I haven’t had much sleep. Sleep will not happen high up here, I know. I am too busy fighting. It does not feel natural to be above the clouds. I just read in a scientific journal that high above we are exposed to certain radiation from the sun that the earth normally protects us from. But the journal also says that these results are ‘most likely’. She talks about her brother, about how he loves watching moving things: windmills, records, wheels of bicycles or cars, flushing water. I just met her, an hour before we took off. She is a radiant girl. We will spend the next two weeks in each other’s company. She graduated from art school and wants to be a documentary director. “What kind of documentaries?” She loves to film people with passion. “What is that, passion?” Passion is an unstoppable force doing a certain thing, reaching a certain goal, she says. She tells me she sees life in people with passion, not in the object of passion but in passion itself. I try to think of my own passion. What makes me alive? Already, and for a long time, I seem to have lost a certain passion that belongs to the laws of physics. What to create? Is it necessary to create? Why should I create? I think of the things I used to be passionate about. Actually, most of them turned out to be a form of resistance to things I did not want to experience. I loved collecting books. Now I can see that I needed other stories in order to escape my own. “Does passion makes us alive? Or is passion the ultimate escape from life?” She answers sweet and clear; talks about people who use passion to create and protect a certain truth for themselves. She knows someone who was passionate about bodybuilding. The guy turned out to be afraid for his body, afraid of losing his physique, hence body-building like a madman, including using dope to construct, to de-construct. “But,” she adds, “if passion is an act of giving, one comes alive.” “I know someone who gives a lot,” I reply, “but always with the idea of receiving. He never stops giving, and his friends and loved ones can never give back what he needs in return. With his giving he takes away the space for others to react and be the way they want to be. His giving is a form of control over everyone around him. Even the things he gives that are normally ‘labelled’ love are intended to control.” The captain talks about something on our left side; we are sitting on the right. “If passion is life itself, why do we need to be ‘doing a certain thing’? Why ‘doing’ anything at all?” She returns to her brother. About how he faces his physical and mental disorders; cannot, does not resist a situation he is well aware of. Through acceptance, life flows and amazement follows – in his case, for things that move. Reminding us that it is life itself that moves us. The doing lies in letting go of resistance. Do you need to ‘do’ to let go, I ask myself. But there is hardly any time to think about an answer. “Resistance’, she says, “takes away passion, takes away life. Look at you. Afraid of being up here high, life cannot run through you; instead, fear has taken over, paralyzed you.” She is right. You can only receive what you are willing to give, what you are willing to live. Resist life and life starts to resist in return. Life gets stuck and it stops knowing what it really loves. We smack into some turbulence. A signal tells us to put on our seat belts. The resistance in me increases. A baby a few rows beyond is playing with the catch that keeps her table up. She enjoys being here. The image of the baby relaxes me. The baby trusts life and enjoys the movement of the plane. I am moved. And I haven’t done a thing. - less tagged:   passion   life   consciousness   resistance    permalink  read: 2669  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

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June, 2010 Dutch Political Leaders Receive book Our World		May, 2010 Resistance Decadence New Book: Our World		April, 2010 Arrogance Naivety Ignorance		June, 2009 Mother of all memories
May, 2009 Come again, and again, and again		April, 2009 The Wolf		March, 2009 The three voices		January, 2009 Born to adore This Dancing with the Beloved
December, 2008 Listen carefully		October, 2008 A fragment of a circle God’s Gods You, me and everything else		September, 2008 Man with powers		August, 2008 The hidden promise Crazy for love
May, 2008 Dr. Feelgood What’s the limit of love		April, 2008 Spring Snow will fall The Cleaner		March, 2008 Motherless Child What I am made of Falling upwards Northern Lights		February, 2008 Glass-made-mind The outer layer of the mind Growing younger On Holy Ground
January, 2008 Watch for the wind to blow How is Diego Maradona doing? What are we guilty off? Everything is what is besides language The eagle and the condor flying together In the heart of Otherness		December, 2007 The man who loved too much The dark brightness The windmills of our mind To make two mountains one, gone Bigger than the stars		November, 2007 Act of passion Making love Life has no meaning Where the heart is Oneness is never the same		October, 2007 Mind blowing Becoming authentic Coloured Mind Hide and Seek Culture of fear The man on the bench The Swordsman
September, 2007 What is thinking? World happening Unity in diversity Smell no evil Going in all directions without beginning or end Alternative routes Superheroes don’t age No place like Utopia? Fog		August, 2007 The Wholeness of being Spirit through matter Looking in the mirror A new heart Is matter what matters? World of opinions. Spaciousness for a flower to grow