the hike

Sam and i went on a station-to-station hike. It was a 14 km hike, from Driebergen-Zeist to Maarn, through woods, woods and more woods. The sun was shining, and the pine trees smelt so sweet. There was a little breeze that loved us, and millions of promising blueberry bushes. Little light-green things were waking up wherever you looked. I think it was the happiest day of my life (except for the day i gave birth to my children) (and my 7th birthday, spent in Odessa with my grand-father, when i got the light-blue checkered dress and the orange umbrella with the orange fish handle) (and the day i quit my job at the university) (and the day i decided it was possible after all to homeschool Isabelle) (and the day when i saw my dad for the first time after many many years) (and a whole bunch of other days...) (but still...).

Since it was 14 km, and we had started around 10 am, we figured we'd be done by lunch-time; so you can imagine our surprise when we sat down to partake of our third light meal (the one where i was finally allowed to get out the roast chicken) at 2:30 pm, to discover that, according to the map, we weren't yet half-way. By the time we reached Maarn, it was after 7pm, and the sun was displaying distinct setting tendencies. There are only two logical explanations: either we crawled through the woods on our bellies, or the route description does not take into consideration the eight or nine breaks that we just had to have in all those absolutely-perfect-cannot-afford-to-walk-past-it spots.

(We'll just have to remember this when we are planning the 25 km hike)

The greatest difficulty we encountered, funnily enough, was linguistic. Both Sam and i have been in this country for so long, and are generally considered by the locals to be so fluent that i don't think either of us expected to be stumped by the route description. We did our best of course, but 'flauw links'??? (turns out it is not the name of a political party) (though we could think of a few the epitath would fit like a glove). The romantically named 'greppel', which we assumed to mean 'delightfully meandering riverlet' turned out upon our return to be the much more prosaic 'ditch'. While the 'vennetje' we had understood to refer to the heath turned out to be a pond. (It is therefore little short of a miracle that we made it to the end at all...)

But the one that still puzzles us completely is the 'schuine kruising'. If anyone would care to explain...

old but irresistible

fooling around in 2009...

owl tree

soundtrack I

"every time your eyes meet mine, clouds of qualm burst into sunshine"

kd lang

it took a while. there was much to choose from. there were serious precedents to be considered. the pressure was high. it had to be just so. representative. attractive. neither too much nor too little. good to dance to. good to wash the dishes to. good to wake up to. but at long last, inspired by the swinging fun we had at the speeldoos tot pierement museum yesterday, i decided to stick my neck out. and so, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, i bring to you the first hit of this spring season. enjoy!

(actually, the CD version is better, but couldn't figure out a way to upload that, plus you would have had to miss out on the prancing, not to mention the soap bubbles...)

magnolia

in the botanical gardens of brussels, i sat on the grass with 1.5 brothers of mine. there were magnolias everywhere, and scented pine fruits. there was also a great sadness, about i don't know what.

on loving Sam

bubbles

isabelle has recently learned how to blow soap bubbles inside other soap bubbles, with the help of a straw and a soapy plate. i know how to do that too. layers on layers of soap fantasy, nearly touching, sometimes meeting and collapsing, rainbow-coloured and offering their beautiful distorted reflections of reality. i certainly know how to do that. what i don't know how to do is stop my bubbles from bursting. and once they burst, i don't know how to stop tears from dropping onto the empty soapy plate.

behind the scenes

Ostara

i wish there was a way to upload a smell, so you could enjoy the freshly baked bread, the scented daffodils, and the crown of my boy's head. yum. hope you're all having a lovely holiday.

beginnings

do you know that one tight-rope suspended breath, just before something begins? (or has it begun already?) Alice Munro talks about 'the way the skin of the moment can break open'. (i wish i had written that. but since i didn't, i'm glad she did.) anyway, right before that, right right up before that, that one breath, that's the best moment. but so fleeting, so impossible to hold, and so often only visible in retrospect, that i might have spent half a lifetime, chasing beginning after beginning, just for a glimpse of it. and failed to catch even that.
at the train museum in utrecht, on the right from the entrance hall, there is a wall of old-fashioned suitcases, piled up ceiling-high. and inside some of the suitcases, fairy-like scenes have been recreated, with classical music playing while the hologram cherubs and swans cavort in their miniature gardens of cardboard and moss. you can climb on a wooden ladder, and peek inside. it was the best thing at the museum, isabelle and i agreed. right there, at the very beginning. actually, just before the beginning.

STOP!!!

Ga maar!

(or how to turn a five-minute walk to the supermarket into a two-hour empowerment workshop for two-year olds)

(and no, i couldn't get better pictures because it's hard to photograph when you are instructed to move and then instructed not to move every few seconds...)

on the beach (bis)

i mislay time. sometimes a few minutes, sometimes an hour or two. sometimes, an entire day. i imagine that day slipping, unnoticed, out of my pocket in the early morning, and lying, discarded and forgotten, on the tiles of the bathroom floor, between the cracks on the staircase. and as it slips from my pocket, so my mind slips out of my body, unnoticed, and takes off on a journey of its own.

and it remains amazing to me, as well as a little sad, how effortlessly i can function without being present at all. i feed, i clean, i cycle to and from the playground, i mediate endless almost-collisions of will, i read books, i play games, i watch and care, i get out bikes, skates, art supplies, i fold endless origami animals, as required. all on automatic pilot. and where does my mind go? what does it have to show for a entire day of dreaming? i don't remember. was i riding bare-backed on a winged creature, saving unworthy pot-bellied princes? or was i sitting in a corner, hunched and nail-bitten, chewing on the slowly churning wheels of some private hell. i don't know. i wasn't there. neither here nor there.

what i do remember, vividly, is the moment of return. it was 18:20. the sun had just broken through the clouds and was drawing its trail of broken diamonds on the sea. the beach was deserted. my too-pale winter feet were turning pink from the freezing water. i took a deep breath. picked up a piece of blue glass. and just like that, something shifted, and life slid back, from a grainy black-and-white movie to its full-bodied sensual self.

( i hope someone found my lost day, i hope they picked it up, dusted it off. and went on to live it the way it yearned to be lived...)

on the beach

things were starting to look distinctly corny around here. you know, the flowers, the bees, the blue skies and the smiling children... i feel the need to push your noses into some of life's authentic details. we got to the beach around 4 o'clock, and some of us wanted to go back as soon as we had arrived (if not earlier). i was carrying toini's toilet (we can't leave the house without it, since he won't use any public facilities and he considers relieving himself in the wild to be nothing short of barbaric), his rather heavy tonka bulldozer (obviously!!), his wallet, his lollipop from last week (which madelin had friendlily retrieved from behind the coat-rack), approximately two kilos of stones and broken bits of ceramic (i.e. the treasures we had found on the way), not to mention the ubiquitous carrots-apples-bananas-water-bottles and my big bulky camera.

having arrived, we unpacked the kite, and then promptly lost it, meaning that toini let it go, and isabelle stumbled after it, in complete panic. it was very windy. i hadn't even noticed because i was trying to photograph my own reflection in the sunglasses of my mummyfied (because frozen) best friend without getting any sand onto the camera (the hardships of the artistic life). when i saw the kite, it was flying way off in the distance, with no child attached to its lower end, and isabelle was a tiny spot on the horizon. i packed up the camera (no sand, no sand, no sand) and ran, remembering to smile flirtatiously at one of the handsome kite-surfers on the way (because it is spring after all), and trying to run in appropriately attractive fashion (very hard when running in deep sand with a hood on and one of your boots half unzipped due to the bulkiness of the pyjama pants that are rather unsuccessfully tucked into it (i know, i know, one shouldn't wear one's pyjama's on the beach in springtime, but they are black, and you can't really tell they are pyjama's, in fact i am not at all sure that they are pyjama's, maybe they used to be regular pants that i forgot to take off one night (that happens) (a lot), and thus they became pyjama's, but anyway, what's in a name?)), finally reached a completely hysterical and collapsed isabelle, spent some time sitting and hugging and making things a little better, while trying to wink at the kite-surfer with the back of my head (hood), and at the same time making grateful polite conversation with the friendly swedish lady who brought back the tangled but complete kite.

finally trekked back to find entire family of frozen friends ready to pack up and go (except toini who, having completely forgotten about the kite, was just starting to get warmed up with the tonka bulldozer and would not budge until he was bribed with a couple of pistacho nuts). the entire visit lasted approximately 32 minutes. but it looks darn good on the photographs, don't you think?

Robin

Robin is five years old. He is soft to touch, and a softie at heart. He lives at the very aptly named Stal Paradiso (with incredible thanks to Josh for finding it!), where he spends his days playing outside with his friends, strolling through the dunes in search of a cold buffet, dipping his hooves in the sea, and waiting for a visitor such as my girl. He is exactly what she was hoping to find one day.

And while she is learning (about standing up for herself and being able to communicate what she wants to another being gently yet authoritatively, about how to clean hooves, and how to read a pony's ear-language) and falling in love, i am learning too (about how to clean hooves, and how to read a pony's ear-language, about the importance of looking until you find what is right, about the pleasure of silence interrupted only by chickens, doves, and horses), and falling in love again. with my little horse-girl. and her soft new friend.

a tuesday in march

there was sunshine, and blue skies, and a warm sea-scented breeze. there were friends. there was the beach, and the light-house, and the dunes, and the garden, and the deserted park, and the mist over the fields in the early morning. there was playing and running, and jumping, and talking, and reading, and screaming, and laughing, and (sword-)fighting, and hugging, and hiding, and searching, and finding, and walking, and water-cycling, and singing, and tobogganing, and eating and drinking and sleeping, and kissing, and being read to, and sharing, and telling, and re-telling, and cleaning, and sitting, and swinging, and helping. there was ice-cream, and wine, and fries, and chocolate, and fruit, and salad. there were bare feet in the dew-covered grass, and bare legs hidden under skirts, and bare arms in pretty dresses, and bare heads under the sun....

oh, and there was spring too.

self-portrait with migraine

floue, trempée jusqu'à l'os, un oeuillet en boutonnière

(we are off to the beach house for a few days, back on thursday, have a good week everyone)

picnic

they don't mind the rain, they don't mind the dark, they don't mind the dog poo, or the people cycling past them on their way home from work, they don't mind that the pasta is cold, they don't mind the cars parked right behind them, they don't mind that there is not a blade of grass or a tree in sight, they don't mind that the table is muddy, or that the chairs are wobbly...

...they don't mind anything really.

they are having their very first picnic of the year.

transition

a vaguely reassuring label
for an uncomfortable place

i know the bud will be a leaf
with a bit of luck
(or is it a flower?)
but the bud
what does it know?
its shape and feel
already altered
unrecognizable to itself
does it have ideas
on how to shed,
where to unfold?

does it fear?
does it trust?
does it hope
to be held gently
through its transformation?

...

i know i do

...

do you think
the dead animals in the museum
are dreaming of the spring outside?