Views of infinity

On a clear day, you can see forever, perhaps even finding yourself as well... listening to the silence, breathing the air of endlessness, identifying the obscuring forms and delighting in content... freedom is there and yours for the taking, you only need to see it...

The Good Life

So, this is more like it...

A tribute of flowers

One of the statues in Amsterdam seems to live a life of its own. Its in a park close to my work, I walk past it almost every day and almost every day there's something different about it.


It's a statue I've written about earlier, that of the Dock Worker which commomorates the General Strike of 1941. An intensely proud tribute to the all little people who, by working together, managed paralyse economic activity after the German invaders began terrorising the Jewish citizens of the country.

Yesterday, probably for a personal reason I can only guess at, sombody left flowers behind at his feet... in the fading colours of late autumn and the statue's shades of gray, the bright, fresh colours of the flowers contrasted so deeply in remembrance of dark days and hope for the future, slightly surreal in the clear light just after the rain stopped falling.

Golden Oldie

Another one of my favourites from years ago is coming to town soon... :D

Crystals and insights

A heavy frost this morning with a layer of ice on bicycle paths and sidewalks, glistening in the light of the street lamps like little crystals. It's such a beautiful sight, all around me the silvery sparks appear and disappear in fractions of moments, as like little stars appearing on earth to be seen and admired.


Crystals have a singular beauty found nowhere else in nature, a symmetry approaching perfection in a wild, untamed way, some redirecting and refracting light in their special ways, others brightening up the world with their beautiful colours and forms.


Consider the humble showflake, the unique crystallisation of the water we depend on, falling from the skies in abundance, yet practically unnoticed for all its beauty.


I was in the city last weekend with Katie, we ended at a shop where Swarovski crystals were sold... the objects there were amazing and yet also a bit disenchanting really... the crystals were too perfect to be true, approaching artificiality. I asked the shop owner if Swarovski also made figures from natural material and he looked at me in amazement and said "of course we don't, we use specially made Swarovski glass for all our products". Disappointing and perhaps even a little sad, I feel.

I don't think trying to "one-up" on nature is such a good idea somehow.

The Tower of Hanoi

One of the puzzles that has always intrigued me is the Tower of Hanoi (sometimes referred to as the Tower of Brahma or the End of the World Puzzle). It was inspired by a legend that tells of a Hindu temple where the pyramid puzzle might have been used for the mental discipline of young priests.


Legend says that at the beginning of time the priests in the temple were given a stack of 64 gold disks, each one a little smaller than the one beneath it. Their assignment was to transfer the 64 disks from one of the three poles to another, with one important proviso: a large disk could never be placed on top of a smaller one. The priests worked very efficiently, day and night. When they finished their work, the myth said, the temple would crumble into dust and the world would vanish.


Looking a little deeper
The number of separate transfers of single disks the priests must make to transfer the tower is 2 to the 64th minus 1, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 moves! If the priests worked day and night, making one move every second it would take slightly more than 580 billion years to accomplish the job!

The simpler variants, with anywhere between 3 and 8 rings can still be very challenging in their own way though... don't underestimate the powers of two.

There's a nice explanation and an animation to be found here.

A small matter of trusting

I've been out of things for a few days... have had a bit too much on my mind recently and I'm having difficulty getting through a couple of realities that have emerged this last week.


I'm given to wondering in how far we can trust the people around us in daily life, and why. In a way, the way we see others is a reflection of oneself and therefore I should be careful about felling judgement at any time because things aren't always what they seem. Little details can be blown up out of all proportion, larger things, when considered a little more carefully, can become less relevant.

And yet... there are people of whom I've always been a little apprehensive from the very beginning. Who knows for what reasons, but the feelings usually remain and in the course of time come to the surface.

What do you do with people who talk behind your back, for their own benefit? What do you do with people who don't tell you the full story or give enough information to work on, leaving you floundering and then ever so detachedly pointing out your points of weakness to those in authority? What do you do with people who are incapable of conducting a discussion on an equal ground, basing the dialogue on their own perceptions leaving no room for your own input or references to your own field of experience?

I've always had a lot of difficulty trusting people, one of those defects I seem to have hard-wired into my psyche for whatever reason. Which isn't fair of course, so in the course of the years I've adopted the strategy of just giving people the benefit of the doubt, sitting on fences and accepting the things that happen for what they are, for better and for worse. To my own detriment occasionally.


Today's going to be another one of those days.

From here to there, and back again.. and again...

Following on from the post, earlier today...

Of course, not just the dislocation of public life in the face of nature's foibles are particularly relevant to my mind at the moment... I also have teenage daughters... enough said, methinks...

This evening, amidst all the confusion on the roads and with public transport, I was supposed to bring Eldest Daughter to a friend's place some 25 km away. After the rain this morning, half the country seems to have frozen up in the meantime and it was tremendous fun getting the car over the cobbled land roads we have here in the Netherlands.

One of the most fascinating characteristics of cobbled roads is that, whenever a frost is looming, these seem to be the first (the very first) places that ice up and end up as slippery as an animal in a greasy pig race. One just ends up slipping and sliding in all sorts of directions, being very careful not to damage one's car if at all possible. (Talking from experience, has happened in the past... sigh...)

Enfin... I knew from experience that the village she needed to get to was a little isolated... I once brought her to a different friend's place some time ago without the proper driving instructions (sigh...) and it transpired that after having driven some 15 km (almost 10 miles) along some isolated country roads (in the dark) after having gone quarterway around the roundabout near the expressway in the way indicated by the signposts, that if I'd gone three quarters of the way around, I'd have been there in about 200 metres or so... damn...

So... this evening I decided to be clever :D . I went three quarters of the way around the roundabout and went merrily on my way... until I encountered the roadblock.

Road maintenance it's called... they leave the whole road ripped open, with lots of lovely sand and other unnavigable nonsense on the middle of the road, and silly me just didn't see it in time...

The car got stuck... no amount of rev's and absolutely no cajoling, sweet talk, gentle threatening or strong-arming could get the car out of the sand pit at that moment.

Enter the Good Samaritan... one, very helpful and quite capable young fellow, volunteered to tow me out of the mess I'd gotten myself into... it worked, for which he was thanked (profusely) and Eldest Daughter and I continued on our way...

And then we were lost. I have absolutely no idea how the villages are put together here... we just lost our friggin' way, in the dark. Three cheers for mobile telephones, one of those inventions we'd never had missed 10 years ago but which has become a totally indespensible item in the meantime...

We called, and explained... we were lost (etc...) and couldn't find our way to where we were supposed to be. This was so totally embarrassing... we were parked out the front of the house we were supposed to be going to, calling to ask for directions.

Daughter delivered, mirth all round, me glad to get out of the whole nonsense in one piece and vaguely amused but nevertheless annoyed...

Why? I get to go and pick Eldest Daughter up in about three quarters of an hour...

Lucky me :-/

Weathering it, yet again

I'd slept well in the same way I've been sleeping better recently, feeling more rested than has been the case for a long time. I woke up this morning with the rain being lashed up against the bedroom window, the cat restlessly coming to the door quietly wondering if somebody was going to pay attention to her breakfast. Same times, same routines... cat's remember where people forget, but they'll always be so very helpful in reminding you if you neglect your duties.


The November storms are upon us once again. We've had a very mild autumn up to now, placidly subliming into the colder weather what's to become our winter. Last night though, a wild storm moved over the country in its own, erratic way, disrupting everybody and everything. It was a bit of a strange sight, looking through the bleary windows at a world still half comatose... remnants of leaves being blown in every which way, water streaming down the roads only to disappear into sewers going who knows where, the occasional and very brave bicyclist trying desperately to get somewhere, preferably without being blown over.


Once again, public transport in disarray but from our side of the country manageable in the early hours of the day. It will probably get worse later, but I'm already where I'm supposed to be so I've handily managed to push the problem back to this afternoon :D

I wonder what today's going to bring here... there's a bit of a sour atmosphere hanging around here at work these last few weeks. People aren't particularly happy here at the moment, there's a growing frustration about the small mindedness developing in management spheres and many of us "longer-serving" employees feel we're not being taken altogether seriously any more. The renewed drive to improve results has worked, but at the same time that production gets streamlined, bottlenecks become uncorked and ambiguities are identified, the creative processes needed to be able to work intuitively and enjoy doing the job to be done are being whittled away, sliver by sliver, day by day. We're just wondering why creative people just can't be, eh... creative... and have the emotional space to be able to do so, whilst leaving managers and directors to do the work they're supposed to be doing, instead of managing ours...


It might be a good idea to get all of us in the department together and just talk things through for once. We're reasonably good at communicating with each other, at least on a personal level withing the department but towards management we're just a little apprehensive about rocking boats and making things difficult. On top of that, I'm not particularly keen on sticking my neck out once again... did that some time ago in a different company and a different life and ended up making things seriously difficult for myself, whilst others just looked the other way when the situation got hairy.

OK, time for some serious stuff now... sigh...

A little pat on the back

Actually, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself today. I've been a little overweight for years now, not extremely overweight but too much of a good thing gets to be a bit uncomfortable after a while :P


Over the last three months, I've managed to permanently shed 5kg without all too much discomfort... I've deliberately waited two weeks now to see if the results were stable, and it seems they are since I'm still very slowly, gradually losing weight

Without getting myself totally fixated on diets and associated nonsense, it's just come down to a couple of small, simple things really:

Keep an eye out for what's actually being consumed.
I maintain a little list, just to keep track of what I've been eating, and when. I don't avoid the nicer things, I just take less of them, less frequently

Keep to reasonable portions at mealtimes.
No "second helpings", avoid most desserts but that's easy because I prefer natural yoghurt anyway and extra sugar is a definite no-no...


Get enough exercise or just any kind of physical movement in the course of the day.
That can be difficult for us office drones, but it can be done and I find it rewarding as well. I walk a lot, from home to the station and vice versa, from the station in Amsterdam to work and back, during my lunch break whenever possible (easier said than done in a chaotic environment)

Less alcohol
This can be a problem. Too many gratuitious calories here, consumed easily, difficult to get rid of... once again, smaller amounts and less frequently...


Sport
I've taken up wheel gymnastics months ago, it's going well on different levels although progress is slow at my age (the youngsters do have a definate advantage here...). It's good for developing coordination, developing power, learning to define my limits and quietly pushing them further to overcome my own fears

I still foul up occasionally, tending to let myself go when things get on top of me... they're the worst moments and also the most frustrating. Those are the moments I just need to stop, look, listen to myself and reconvince myself of what I'm trying to achieve and why I'm doing it. Not always easy, but it can be done by finding some sort of distraction as well.

And no cheating ;-)

Live8 revisited

Cheryl posted this follow-up on the Live8live concert... take a good read and follow your heart... it's important.

Thanksgiving wishes

Tomorrow, on the fourth Thursday in November, people in the U.S.A. celebrate Thanksgiving. A quiet moment to pause and be thankful for the goodness of the earth.


Except if you're a turkey, of course...
We had something similar in Australia, the yearly Harvest Festival (can't remember when that was exactly) with special church services, fruit and vegetable competitions, family get-togethers and the grossest exhibitions of whatever had anything to do with produce.

Of course, at Sesame Street they always need to do things differently though...


I'm still wondering whatever happened to Mr. Hooper.
People, have a wonderful holiday, take care and keep well with your families in all your respective ways.

Alone together

Part of being human is also realising the fact that you're lonely, very lonely at times.


Let's face it... we're the only ones who can understand ourselves and not even completely at that. How on earth can we expect somebody else to be able to creep into our personal frame of reference to see and feel life the way WE do? To see the world with our eyes, to understand the motivations for our own points of view and our emotional states.


I don't think we can... I'm me, you're you and only by using an extraordinary amount of communication, imagination and empathy can we even begin to understand where the gap lies and try to bridge it. We're products of our own, individual histories which nobody else can share with us.

People are pretty well hard-wired with the desire to connect to others... we all enjoy and need contact with the people around us, we need to feel noticed, acknowledged in some way, important to a degree. We mirror ourselves through our contacts with others, but remain trapped within the shell of our own existence, trying desperately to reconcile both aspects of our lives and find meaningful ways of interacting with the world around us.


Some of what I read in other peoples blogs echoes what I've just written... the sense of bewilderment, the constant realisation that the world is not what it seems and not even what you'd hoped it might be, ambiguity and double meanings mixed up in each others differing and evolving mental zoo.

Even though we mightn't understand, if we do understand that we don't understand I think we've got a pretty good basis for a constructive discussion going here. If anything, tolerance, understanding, compassion and empathy should be the basis for daily living. We're all in this together, with all our strengths and weaknesses and none of us are the same, all different and yet all equal in worth, potential and right to be accepted on our own terms.

Accepting this fact is difficult, it places a basis for daily living outside oneself in a communal sphere which isn't an attitude that is natural since we all are essentially self-centred for reasons I mentioned earlier. Could this be part of where religions kick into personal experience as well?


I wonder where my mind is going on this subject... I need to think it through a little longer I fear.

Keep well...

Evening thoughts...

1. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn't.

2. I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.


3. Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.

4. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

5. Don't take life too seriously; no one gets out alive.

6. You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.

7. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

8. Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.


Made by my daughter, in a moment of inspiration...
9. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

10. NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck-is-the-room-spinning medicine.

11. God must love stupid people; he made so many.


12. The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

13. It IS as BAD as you think and they ARE out to get you.

14. Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.

15. Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

16. Being "over the hill" is much better than being under it.

17. Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up.

18. Procrastinate Now!

19. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. It comes bundled with the software.


20. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

21. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

22. STUPIDITY IS NOT A HANDICAP. Park elsewhere!


23. They call it PMS because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.

24. He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless dead.

25. A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS, but it uses up 3000 times the memory on your computer.

26. HAM AND EGGS -- A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.


27. The trouble with life is there's no background music

Three cheers for Liesl

In the meantime, whilst I wasn't paying attention and feeling a little preoccupied the last few days, Liesl has been quietly celebrating her birthday (yesterday, Monday).


"Twee violen en een trommel en een fluit..."
So here's a little, belated Happy birthday from all of me here :D

And now you know where Liesl's blog can be found, you can go over and wish her a Late Happy Birthday as well. I don't think anybody will worry about you being a little late, just think of it as being almost a year early ;-)

Birthday wish

Today's my grandmothers birthday, or at least it would have been. She was born in the Netherlands in 1900 and died in Australia in 1986 after having emigrated with her daughter (my mother) and her son-in-law (my father).


A remarkable woman in her own way, quiet and reserved, incomprehensible for a child growing up in the 60's and 70's as she seemed to have come from a world as totally different from ours, in our own perceptions.

Imagine a world in which there is bitter poverty amongst opulent wealth, houses with only perfunctory heating and no running water, no electricity and sanitary facilities some 30 metres down the path in the backyard which needed to be crossed even in the bitterest frosts. A society in which the working class had few rights and were forcibly put into their places if they dared raise their voices.

She'd led a long and difficult life, married late, had known much illness, encountered economic misfortune due to the Depression and the Second World War during which her husband (my grandfather) died of kidney failure. They'd run their own gardens and flower business, always balancing on the edge of poverty but managing to maintain a sense of dignity and refusing to bow to the social forces dictating social segregation.

As befits the true survivor, she kept on going tenaciously, bringing up her only child, playing an active but background role in the Socialist Party which worked toward a better society for all, and for the resistance movement against the German invaders by providing a "safe house" for political fugitives and escaped Allied soldiers/airmen, for which she was honoured after the war by the United States government.

I never really understood my grandmother, when I was young I really had no idea of the issues involved. I left Australia in 1979, I saw her once after that in 1983 when back briefly on holidays. A parting I'll never forget because we both knew it would be the last time.

Gratitude

Thank you for the words and thoughts of encouragement the last day or so, they're worth much to me in my moments of confusion here. Just at those moments that I can't focus or just can't get the little pieces of my puzzle together in the whirlwind of life, a hand to hold, a friendly word, a thought that echoes across the world can do wonders and move souls.

For me, these are moments of insight and extreme gratitude. Insight, because all sorts of nonsense that's swirling around in my mind just snaps into place, making sense suddenly, gratitude because I know that people are caring, can care and sincerely wish to do so. Lessons learned and relearned, day in, day out.

Thank you.

Days end

It's the end of a long and pretty difficult day, both at work and at home. Long as in interminably boring, difficult in that the realisation has hit hard that whatever happens, I just can't go on acting out my life in the way I am.


I had a really strange moment last Sunday morning, when I went to the swimming pool with Katie. Just one of those little "together" things we do once in a while as Sunday morning is "family time" at the pool... only parents accompanied by children are admitted.

Looking out, over the water, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of detachment, as if I were totally outside the situation at hand and not part of it at all. The thought struck me suddenly (I have no idea where it could have come from) that I was just participating in some kind of horrible play, and obscene farce in which the roles were fixed and that nobody had any idea that they were part of a predefined, mechanical process that was being acted out to its logical conclusion.


The situation had nothing to do with the people present of course... it was more a reflection of what was going on in my own mind, intuition trying to break free from the constraints of deading mediocrity and numbing over-familiarity.


After that, the rest of the day just spiralled downwards. I made sure Katie was able to enjoy herself, but I was left facing a torrent of unfinished business in my mind that just won't go away any more.

I slept badly last night... couldn't find the peace and quiet to settle down even though I was dog tired. Again, one of those strange things I always seem to be having, happened again... at 4 a.m. I received a text message on my mobile from a friend in Australia, just quietly wondering if I was OK and if I could let me know, which for me was enough of an indication that some serious shit indeed is on its way...


I'm not looking forward to this, I have no idea what's going to happen but as usual I'll just play it by ear...

Darkness

Sometimes words don't help when you're trying to find your way...

Reality check

A couple of days ago I came across the quote:

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

I've deliberately been avoiding writing anything about my marriage up to now. For many reasons, one of which being that it just hurts too much at moments to want to bring it up at one of the few moments I have for myself, doing something that gives me a lot of pleasure and which I'm not really wanting to sacrifice as well. A second is that it's not particularly relevant in that strange fantasy world I've constructed for myself in a safe corner of my mind, where anything and everything can roam free and wreak havoc amongst each other whilst not doing too much damage otherwise...

At some point in my life, soon after we started living together years ago, things changed. For all my ability to intuitively feel what was going on in the world around me, I failed to see what was happening under my very nose. I can't remember who wrote it originally, but in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance there is a quote which has stuck in my memory (ok, more or less by memory, this is an ad lib regurgitation in the spirit of what was written)...

Some things don't get noticed because they're so small and unobtrusive, escaping visibility... other things don't get noticed because they're just so large, so all-encompassing or so familiar that they're never, ever subject to question.

In a way I wish I could have been able to keep my eyes shut... so many people do that and have developed it into an art form, living life and just pretending.

I can't do it any more.

Sinterklaasfeest

The Sinterklaas (Saint Nicolas) season is now in full swing, appearances being made across the country. Today was our company's Sinterklaas party which started with a magicians performance which delighted them... it was really very funny, especially when some of the children tried to explain the tricks being done.

After the performance, Sinterklaas arrived...


A little nervousness could be detected amongst the smaller children...


The children get called up, one by one (or by family, if the children are a little shy), to have a chat with the old fellow and receive their presents...


It was a long and wearying afternoon for the participants :P

The Dutch Harry Potter 6 release

One of the local bookshops organises something special around the launch of the Harry Potter books.... we've been along to a couple of the English language launches and tonight it was the turn of the Dutch version of HP and the Halfblood Prince...


Welcome to my parlour...
Because of council ordinances, it was a closed party this evening. We didn't know that, and arrived to late to be able to join in.


The owner of the bookshop let us in about 23.45 so we could be at the tail end of the festivities and well and truly in place for the unveiling of the book.


Anticipation running high here...


And a couple of kids who liked to be on the photo...

To be released soon...

... or perhaps that wouldn't be such a smart idea...

Food for thought

Friday's the day we get to eat easy... no bother and no nonsense in the kitchen for yours truly this time.

It's just part of our system these days... I cook five days a week because I'm either first home or because I (used to) like to fool around with new recipes, trying my hand with new techniques. I say "used to" since in the course of the last 10 years I seem to have landed myself a collection of increasingly picky eaters who all have a large range of likes and dislikes with very little overlaps occasionally... so, Friday's the day we just have a "pig-in" with anything we like. As in pizza's, deep-fried chips (aka patat, french fries, frites), shoarma, taco's or take-away from the Chinese restaurant. As long as preparation is short, simple and worked away easily...

For me, cooking was always a way of relaxing and being creative, nowadays it's more a rushed necessity in between entries in an overloaded agenda. Which is a pity as I sincerely feel that time taken to prepare and consume a meal together is time well spent. We see each other so little in the course of a week... working late, badminton, street-dance, the occasional "I'm home for dinner but I'll be gone as soon as it's over" routine etc... things needing doing, places to go and homework to be done, distractions galore...

This evening was more of the same... Eldest Daughter was late after her work-experience afternoon, Middle Daughter was away for a presentation at the badminton club so we ended up at the McDonalds for a change.

Which was a bit of a surprise. McDonalds doesn't have such a good name in the nutritional field, but when I saw what could be ordered, I thought it was quite good. A large salad with chicken, which taken without the copious dressing served, was tasty and something I could account for diet-wise :-)

Would like to getting back to cooking some good Asian food again in the future though... I've always found them to be the most rewarding meals because they're just so different.

OK, so a guy can dream...

Scene in the city

Listening to... The Dream Sequencer

A fascinating electronic fantasy in music and time, in the same tradition as Jeff Wayne and Rick Wakeman


The Dutch composer Arjen Lucassen, working under the name Ayreon constructs an operatic masterpiece, almost magical to hear.

Juggling, anyone?

Seen in a shop window, close to work yesterday... the whole shop is devoted to juggling and jugglers attributes.


Any life management accessories as well?