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I’m sitting outside Olive, a great bagel-cum- coffee shop in the heart of SoHo. It’s early and most of the shops are still closed. Some street artists are unpacking paintings and drawings for sale. Trucks are unloading stuff. Morning is awakening, although the sun is still hidden behind typical New York buildings: huge warehouses with beautiful exterior stairway constructions. Dozens of people are passing me by and a child-like surprise hits me at noticing how different all of their faces are and how, at the same time, none of these faces seem to be so unknown that they shock me. It is as if I already know these people I’ve never met.
Some of the people pass me in a hurry; some of them give the impression of still being asleep; others are vibrant and have intense discussions through small microphones hanging around their necks. All these people are going somewhere; all of them have their unique destinations; all of them are ‘on the move’.
I wonder: What is it that drives us? What do we long for? What is it we search for in a world that seems to be violent, restless and insecure? I long for peace of mind; I would like to be wholehearted with the people I’m with and about the things I do; I would like to enjoy every minute of the life that I live. I haven’t met many people who don’t want to enjoy their lives, so I imagine that what we long for is to live a life of joy.
Joy can be found in many things. I have found joy in lovers, books, clothing, eating, holidays, places, friends, and probably many other things that do not come to mind right now. All of those things have, at certain moments, satisfied me. Which is more than the Rolling Stones got. But this kind of satisfaction doesn’t seem to satisfy me to the degree it used to. Satisfaction has a short lifecycle and continually demands something else to be satisfied with, or about. Satisfaction and consumption go hand in hand: we look for joy in something outside of ourselves. But after a while we begin to understand that enduring joy can never be found in something other than in ourselves.
This understanding, which more and more of us are feeling these days (and which is in all of us), stimulates an inward journey: self- inquiry kicks in and the question comes up: ‘What truly matters to me.’
tagged: NewYork SoHo Olive matter consciousness spirituality consuming knowing
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 Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen
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I’m wandering around somewhere north of New York’s Little Italy district, where the streets have names like Mott and Baxter. I suddenly stop in front of a shop. Something must have grabbed my attention – in a split second and before I am conscious of what it is.
The window in front of me plays a wonderful game with my imagination. I see a table, made from wood and beautifully done. But that’s not what has stopped me in my tracks. There’s a vase of flowers on the table and somehow the image of the vase with flowers looks like a paper cut-out by a photographer I recently bought a picture from. Looking closer, however, I see that there is actually nothing on the table. The table is bare, and the vase with flowers combination is a reflection from the flower shop opposite. As I turn around I see an exact copy of the vase with flowers, calling for attention. The flowers themselves are very colourful, but I prefer its reflection, for now. The reflected image makes the colours look more withdrawn and seems to bring forth the shape of the flowers more accurately.
Is my mind tired of being coloured?
I walk to the other side of the street and indulge myself in the flowers’ colours. The red and orange of certain flowers is intense. Looking longer, more closely and giving the colours the chance to grow in my mind, I suddenly see something other than the colour in the colours. The red, for example, is no longer just a certain shade of red; the red has a ‘floweriness’ to it as well: the flower adds something to the red and makes it unique to that flower. The red also communicates the velvety feeling that is part of the flower. I can see little spots bearing a slightly different shade of red and which give the flower its particular character. And at the centre of the flower, the red turns to black, giving it a specific shape. So although the reflection across the street actually communicated the outer form of the flower more accurately than the coloured version, the colours bring out the 'inner' part of the flower far better.
tagged: WoodyAllen consciousness KarlBlossfeldt Ursus NewYork flower red mind Nolita imagination
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 Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen
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I see advertisements on the roofs of New York’s cabs for Heroes, an award winning NBC show now entering its second season. I’ve never seen it, so a few hours later I decide to watch some episodes from the DVD box set I have just bought.
The show is about regular people from all around the world discovering that they have special abilities. Not knowing where their powers came from, each deals with life’s changing events.
One of the heroes is Hiro Nakamura, a 24-year-old Japanese geek who can bend time and space, giving him the ability to both freeze time and teleport through it. One day he teleports to New York and discovers a comic describing his life, including his life yet to be lived. The comic is the creation of another hero (Isaac Mendez) who can draw the future. In the comic, Hiro Nakamura reads that he will move to New York – and of the horrific events that are in the making. Hiro wants to contact the comic’s writer and use his powers to stop the horrors on the page from actually taking place.
In his latest film, Ober (Waiter), Dutch director and actor Alex van Warmerdam plays a waiter who, when he is bullied by his clients, protests to ‘his writer’ about his life. He asks ‘his writer’ to re-write him – including a new girlfriend, new neighbours and nicer clients. The writer of course complains: he’s the writer and his characters have only one choice, which is to live out his ideas.
tagged: Waiter StrangerthanFiction consciousness power authetic totality Hero NewYork AlexvanWarmerdam MarcForster
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 Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen
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Five hours north of New York, following the Hudson River all the way, I reach the Adirondacks. At Lake George, the start of the Adirondack Mountains, I will attend a week-long silent retreat with Gangaji, a teacher in Advaita, the Hindu philosophy of non-duality.
A half-year earlier my girlfriend and I had also attended a retreat with Gangaji, at the legendary Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. The experience was mind blowing. This time the retreat is at a YMCA, a big venue built in a beautiful style that pays tribute to those typical family holiday destinations of the 1950s, the ones that have been so beautifully captured by photographer Martin Parr and in the film Dirty Dancing.
The consciousness of all being one has been burning in me ever since I discovered Advaita, seven years ago. The experience of Wholeness that is at the core of Advaita has led me to investigate who I am – a process that is ongoing. Gangaji is a great teacher: through silence you experience the essence of who we are. Her pointers are clear and she is sweet about any question that arises.
After a few days spent in silence, experiencing the intense love that comes from the feeling of being all connected, it suddenly feels weird to be in this retreat. I feel a strong hunger to know ‘outside’. Of course, if all is one, there cannot be such a thing as ‘outside’ and ‘inside’. However, being in this retreat feels that way: you have to wear a name badge all the time; alcohol is forbidden; you have to stay and wait for five minutes after Gangaji has left the room; you have to answer certain questions; and couples are advised not to hang out with each other all the time. It is true that every ‘social community’ has its rules and regulations, but it is just this knowledge that leaves me with no reason to stay.
After four days, my girlfriend and I decide to leave the retreat: it has never felt so good to play truant; it has never felt so strong to demonstrate the experience of freedom for real. We spend hours driving south beside the Hudson River, hit the Holland Tunnel and enter downtown New York. It’s rush hour; New York streets don’t have lanes and we get squeezed between hundreds of cabs. Finally, after being stuck in traffic for yet more hours we reach our hotel.
The last day of our stay in New York we decide to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where there is an exhibition of Dutch Painters. The Age of Rembrandt features 228 masterpieces displayed together, works of Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, and – of course – Rembrandt van Rijn. Being Dutch, we feel a bit like Japanese, eating only Japanese in every country abroad.
tagged: NewYork consciousness BigSur spirituality Gangaji Esalen MartinParr DirtyDancing MET painters Advaita India God connectedness fear
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 Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen
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It’s foggy outside and I have a flashback to one of Antonioni’s films – Identificazione di una donna – in which a couple decide to break up. Stuck in fog, she gets out of the car and disappears. He tries to go after her, shouts her name, but the fog is so thick that he not only loses sight of her, but of his car as well. He’s lost. As always, Antonioni illustrates beautifully the mental state of his characters by showing their surroundings.
There is no breaking up where I am right now, besides the waves. The weather is not only murky, it is rough, too. But even waves, no matter how high they are, return to the sea.
It took me two hours to get from Shelter Island to here. Montauk is at the absolute end of the island of Long Island, and the landscape is totally different from every other part of it too. Greener and less organized. And the waves make this place a secret surfer’s paradise.
A friend of mine had advised me to turn left just before the lighthouse. I drive into a green area with no cars and no people. I park my car and get out. The fog not only takes away the visibility, it also absorbs the sound. Through a thick whiteness, I see a gigantic radar system on a white house.
I walk further, through the forest, and the fog starts to become less intense. I hear a dog barking, but see no dog. Through trees I see three concrete walls with black letters: ‘No entering. Closed to public.’ I can’t see how you could enter, even if you wanted to. In front of me houses appear and as I come closer, a whole street becomes visible. Green and yellow houses, a church, even, and something that looks like a village hall. Here too, there are no people, and there is no sound, besides the barking of the dog, which has become louder. The barking doesn’t seem to come from the streets – it sounds like it is coming from under the ground.
The houses look like they are made from wood, like the houses in those typical US fishing villages. Up closer I see that the houses are actually made of concrete and that the wood structure is actually paint. There is no way to enter these houses: the doors are concrete, too. And so are the windows. And as with the three concrete walls, earlier, here too I am warned not to enter. The warning works on me like a puzzle: how can I enter these concrete fake houses?
Out of nowhere a dog runs up to me, barking as if I am his biggest enemy. A man shouts something at the dog. I can’t hear what he says as I’m too busy wondering what to do to stop the dog from attacking me.
tagged: consciousness Antonioni NewYork Montauk time mind God
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 Photo: André Platteel
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I’m en-route to Shelter Island, the most southerly part of Long Island. From Brooklyn, I take the Utopian Highway, all the way down to what New Yorkers describe as ‘heaven’.
A few months earlier I was invited by the Eindhoven Design Academy to lecture on and discuss Utopia. Also invited was Isaac Shapiro, a South African teacher in non-duality, a man who has taught me many things that truly matter to me.
Thomas More coined the term Utopia in 1516, in his novel of the same name. In it, he refers to an exotic, non-existent island of perfection. This was in the time that new worlds were being discovered – South and North America, for example, with their new and exotic cultures – giving Europeans hope of a better world after the darkness of the Middle Ages.
Before More introduced the term Utopia, a better world was thought of as being something we could only reach after we die: the Christian promise of Heaven. Since More, many utopian worlds have been described, appearing in novels, theories, paintings, films and the dreams of many – each utopia describing a slightly different version of how the perfect world would look.
What does Utopia mean?
Utopia is often seen as a place where there is no drama, no war, no pain, no racism, no sexism; a place with respect for all that is living, where everyone has equal chances and where everyone is treated with care and love.
In short: a place of true perfection.
tagged: utopia NewYork Shapiro mind McLuhan film media marketing consciousness
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 Photo: André Platteel
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He fights for her to get better again. She has embraced her death and she becomes, as she describes it, ‘more full’ – every breath bringing her closer to the end.
As a scientist, he doesn’t accept her death; he doesn’t accept death in general, describing it as a sickness that must be defeated. She drinks from the fountain of eternal life, knowing from what she experiences in her state-called-sickness that death must be no more than a transition to a different form – a different form of life. After discussing mind (in his film Pi) and body (in Requiem for a Dream), director Darren Aronofsky has chosen spirit as the theme of his latest film, Fountain; spirit: the endless source of life that cannot end in death.
I am having dinner with friends in Manhattan. Earlier, an Amsterdam friend who was born and raised in New York and happens to be visiting at the same time I am, takes me to a fashion show for the company he works for. About twenty models, all young and beautiful, show the latest designs of a global fashion brand. The public is young and beautiful too.
Afterwards, during dinner, we are joined by his two brothers and friends (still living in NYC). One brother is about to get married. His girlfriend describes how she envisages her wedding day and who they have invited. He tells about the day they met. They were at the Jukebox, dressed as superheroes. She wore a Catwoman suit with leather gloves – her fingers sticking out. He was dressed up as the Green Hornet. His eyes sparkle and illustrate how blessed he feels to have met this super woman.
Someone asks if they met on Halloween. “No. When I go out I always dress up as a superhero,” he confesses without shame. “I love superheroes. As a child I loved to go to school in different superhero outfits. And at St Marks, there are plenty of places where you don’t look silly going out dressed up, even in the middle of summer if you want to.” His brother makes a cynical remark, something along the lines of “You’re too old to be a superhero now.” But superhero brother doesn’t understand this at all: “Superheroes don’t age,” he states.
Everybody laughs but he – he knows.
tagged: hero Manhattan death consciousness Aronofsky Coppola body NewYork
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 Photo: André Platteel
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The other day, I decided to visit the New York Museum of Modern Art, MoMa, which has been holding a major exhibition by Minimalist artist Richard Serra.
Born in San Francisco, California, in 1939, Serra is known for his enormous metal sculptures. He treats lumps of metal like sheets of paper: his gracious steel-plate forms, often measuring several meters thick and several meters tall, are made at one of the few remaining shipyards with the equipment to shape steel plates as if performing an exercise in origami.
But before I head for the two floors containing Serra’s work, I grab a look at the MoMa’s permanent collection. In short order, I find myself standing mesmerized in front of one of Jackson Pollock’s works, a huge piece that takes up an entire wall on the top floor of the museum. I know his paintings from books, but now I understand why the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, in a now classic essay, emphasizes the importance of seeing the original work rather than a reproduction. The clots of paint and hurriedly applied stripes go every which way: this is a work with no beginning, no specific direction, and no end.
I back up till I’m a considerable distance from the picture, the way you do with a Monet (which reminds me of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless when she describes a hunk of a guy as “such a Monet,” because “He looks very good from a distance, but up close it is such a mess”). I’m now so far away that people keep walking between me and the canvas. But + more
tagged: NewYork Moma Serra Pollock Benjamin painting art Clueless disorientation Monet mind consciousness
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I’m drinking a cup of tea in a bar in MacDougal Street in the heart of the Village, New York. I’m sitting at an outside table, it’s late and it’s still warm.
The bar doesn’t have opening hours, as it points out at the top of the menu: Always Open. At the table next to me are four men. In an obviously English accent, they order an expensive wine – but want to try it first. The wine isn’t served by the glass, which means opening a bottle. Yes, you guessed it, after trying it they conclude that it isn’t up to the mark, and send it back. I wonder to myself if they really tasted it.
The waiters and waitresses have beautifully cut blue overalls. And on the street you see all kinds of people. Like the man in yellow shirt and shorts who stops and asks me if I could ask the waitress for some cream when she reappears, so he can put it in the coffee he just bought a bit further up the street.
After adding the cream, he hangs around. A number of passersby greet him – I assume he’s known around here. He asks if can smell the smell. I don’t know what the smell is. He points towards a woman dressed in black. “She has magic powers,” he explains, “and she doesn’t like me. She’s already tried to curse me a couple of times by trying to confuse me by releasing a disgusting smell. But I’ve beaten her,” he says, without any note of triumph in his voice. + more
tagged: NewYork magic knowing curse evil consciousness
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 Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen
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I’m in New York. The city of Woody Allen. I turn on the TV in my hotel room and watch Zelig, a mockumentary, or fictional documentary.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it (you should), Allen plays the title character, Leonard Zelig, a man with the ability to transform his appearance so he blends in with the people around him. Put him with doctors and he becomes a doctor. Put him with overweight people and he starts piling on the pounds. Among Orthodox Jewish men, he sprouts a beard and his clothes transform into a black suit.
To those around him, Zelig is the "human chameleon". To doctors, he’s a puzzle: no one understands how he can be constantly someone else.
Enter Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow), a psychiatrist, who establishes that the cause of Zelig’s condition is his overwhelming desire to ‘belong’. So overwhelming that it leads him to forget his own identity and assume that of the people around him. Zelig’s mind – his thoughts – determines his appearance, his physical form.
Dr. Fletcher sets out to help Zelig trust his own identity. Who he is. It works, but there are problems. When Fletcher’s boss makes a casual remark about the weather, for example, Zelig doesn’t just disagree with him, he beats him up. Zelig’s self-trust is now so strong that he can’t accept other people’s opinions any more.
It doesn’t take long before Zelig starts to feel the consequences: his whining, his insistence on being right, makes him unloved. No surprise then that his desire to be loved + more
tagged: Allen NewYork Zelig body patterns Nazis uniqueness wholeness connectedness
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