time warping

I have just taken a dose of melatonin and while waiting for it to kick in, here they go: first Amsterdam impressions.
Once landed the language and the place suddenly became familiar. My first stop at the Schiphol airport was at the Etos. For what? Zoute drop. That impossibly salty snoep I am so addicted to. I filled a modest bag (I don't know my limits when it comes to dropjes) and laughed on the way into the train station because that move was so predictable and so... Dutch. 

zoute drop

Soon the language becomes familiar: "bonnetje bij?" - nee hoor, bedankt - into the culture without a blink.

First thing I realised is how fancy the OV chipkaart has become. It glitters! And the metro system is now very first world. Very nice for the hearing impaired. Each station called comes with a picture of the area, so you can recognise where you are. 

I rush through my street, the Vrolikstraat, and giggle again while going up the impossibly steep stairs of my Amsterdam house. I live now in the attic= zolder. And it is gorgeous. Alex would kill me. He left it spotless and I have managed to turn it into a war zone in a few hours. but now I have all I need in reach.


Because Europe has decent internet and not that shame of a connection from Down Under I have videoconferenced every  conversation I've been able to carry. Great to see people.
My bike was still upstairs and the tyres were flat so I had to walk to the shops, walk, grrrr. Got myself a 6 pack of Grolsh and started cracking beers. And worked to make me tired. I love the peace of my neighbourhood, but today they were cleaning  the playground downstairs with pressure hoses and I didn't get a proper sleep. Shame... I was so ready to take THE nap.

Vrolikstraat playground being cleaned

The first person I've seen in Amsterdam was Jay. He was at work (Ticketscript) which was a bike ride away. I really wanted to take the bike out and hadn't seen Jay in maybe 4 years, so, off we went. We met through one of my closest friends in Amsterdam, Annalisa. Annalisa, like I, quit coporate life and unlike me she became a talented photographer. Jay has been taking pictures of the party scene for a long time and has quite a name in the field. I remember he helped Annalisa for a project in the use of light and movement in darkness. And they used me as a model. 
This is some of Jay's work:
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaysphoto

The ticketscript office is on an artificial half island off centraal. The views are amazing and the terrace a dream. Sorry I made it late. Would have been nice to catch up with the rest of the team.
We walked together to centraal and I asked him to take us a picture. This one is for Annalisa. And it has a wish: next time we'll meet the three of us. Love you sweetie. See you soon. 

Amsterdam day 1. We miss Annalisa

Before going to bed I biked through the Dappermarkt. Did I say it  feels amazing to bike through Amsterdam? Everyone is out of your way, because on the bike you are a supreme being. The bike paths are so broad, life is easy, it's just soooo nice!!! 
Checked also to see if Pats was home, but she's already moved next door. Caught up shortly with her and saw the new place. What a nice apartment! What a big terrace! Congratulations! Her two cats Ukki and Pebbles were spending the first night in the new apartment. I had the chance to cuddle brave Ukki. Pebs was a bit under the weather. 

And then Pats told me Lala is back on the streets. My Lala. Something to look forward to tomorrow.

I had another videoconference to wish Bego good night on the same time zone. She laughed at me trying to figure out how to operate my fairphone. 
Night  from A'dam.

start of the journey

A journey,
when going back to the roots it is no holidays. It is a journey. Everything and everyone you meet is meaningfull because it  has traces of the you who didn't stay.

Ready to go.  The plans are to get home in Amsterdam. I won't grab the bike straight away, because my friend Pats, who is my coffee and life lessons supplier has moved just next wall to me. Who would have thought! Currently trying to arrange lunch with Sandra and Katrin.
Life isn't that easy when internet crashed the night you needed it the most. Will make all more exciting, I guess.

These last days in Sydney the rain finally ceased, which allowed my mind to open up, as it was too cloudy from the weather.
And it is a pity I miss that process of drifting into the spring, because it is a very important process I need to experience for the emotional-creative side. Zum Glück the European Indian summer will give me a feeling of it.

In Sydney I gave away my bike and my guitar. They landed in the right hands, so they will be in better shape than before. The guitar was waiting  for Jorge to enjoy it, but  landed in Chrispy's hands, my guitar teacher. He has encouraged me so much I hardly recognise myself. It is really empowering to be able to develop a skill you didn't know you had. Big thank you!
Giving the bike away was a hard thing to do. But it is in the hands of a great caregiver. I couldn't help thinking of the bike twice yesterday and luckly I had no internet to troll Alec. I am positive he will love it. I just wish I would have had the time to hand it over in better shape. But my future is still uncertain and the objects that surround me get affected as well.
You just have to look at  the veggie patch to understand.

I spent a great weekend with my flatmates and I want to thank Jorge for coming to the rescue on Saturday. A bit late, but it was the right dose of  awesomeness I needed. Shame I missed you yesterday eve to end my stay and start my journey with a dose of that energy.

This is how the European itinerary is looking like, but it is subject to change at any time:

Sept 12 Amsterdam: Morning meet for coffee, afternoon meet  for lunch and evening meet my neighbours for a formal chat, but over biertje!
Saturday Sept 13 locked in: Double date with Cornie and Leo. Superdinner together. Awwww!
Sunday: Trying to see who is less busy to invite myself. Trying to see if we can have a meeting of ex-colleagues in petit commitee.
Monday: Paris - Bego - LOVE: re-united with my better half. Chances to see my little brother and ex-drama-school-alcoholic-husband (one day I'll write how reality surpased fiction)
Tuesday: we fly to Lebanon and we'll get a taste of  a Lebanese wedding. I forgot that this will mean amazing food. I can't wait.

We'll be travelling further to Jordan and Israel. As usual we are not very prepared. And that's cool. I just remembered as I am writing this that I forgot to follow up with my Israeli friends. Woo-hoo... And i have just over an hour to get  dressed and head to the airport. 
Way to believe in the Parkinson's law.

On my way back to Amsterdam I am buying an interrail pass, because  I want to go straight to Berlin and see the Berlin troupe and hopefully visit Leipzig or Dresden on my way to Regensburg.
After Regensburg I am going straight to Mannheim. And then I will slowly make my way to Barcelona, with a further stopover in Paris.

So far the layout.
I will be updating as often as I can from l'Europe, la belle Europe.

counting the days. Itchy fingers, mind in open mode

It is really when you need to use your brain the most, that the cheeky bastard plays  with you and asks you to write.
For the pleasure of it.
This strange Mediterranean flower has begun the process of being set in motion and in short, she'll be going back to the nursery and she'll inhabitate the different gardens that made her blossom. Just the thought is already a reason for these "Schmetterlinge".

Added to it I can't wait to see my cuz and thank him for the guitar he once gave me. Because now I am finally feeling that my fingertips are about to callus. And soon the songs I wrote will find a tune. And I will get to hug him a lot and reciprocate, because he is so cool and we both have the crazy artsy twist.

How lucky to have so many amazing glasses to see my life through. So many mirrors to look into.
The European tribe... Finally meeting brains that match my freakyness and finally able to use my 6 languages in one continent!

Let the madness begin!

consuelo de tontos?

First of all, I am not a journalistic writer. I write, because other people can let their feelings out through music or painting and those aren't my best skills. Writing, however, has always accompanied me and, like those people who always scribble gorgeous drawings in their little notebooks I am always  accompanied by a notebook (or two) where I write random stuff. When I was studying my degree I filled book covers and those classifiers in files with poetry. I lost all, but some was awesome (olee the modesty). Now when I write something I deviate from ideas into endless "to do" lists.
I publish here when I am on the computer and I need to share. I don't like to get too personal, but there are always  days...

In my notebook scribbly dreams mix with reality and when they do, sometimes fear makes its way through. I haven't worked on my spiritual self for nothing and I know fear is looking into the future, which doesn't exist. But my hard drive has collected information of  "past futures" and if I go through my files I understand that in my endless learning my "moving into the next screen" doesn't seem to come.

This is my silly face when I talk to Alpha on Skype, like it or not he has been a major milestone in a major decision that changed my past future drastically. I smile when I hear him say that he is doing allright and he's well

And this is also my face when I hear him say that he misses me, that he loves me, that he needs me or that he will wait for me as long as it takes. There is an enormous gap I am aware of, but he doesn't seem aware of it. Then I feel responsible, guilty and impotent. I try to explain how big the cultural gap is and how removed my First World is from his mentality, from his world, but it doesn't work...

I like to hear he is well, but the thought of having influenced someone's life, or giving someone false hopes of a better life... produces this face.

The face change happened in minutes and I decided to take stills on the camera to see for myself how many feelings an expression can hold. And since I can't express those feelings in one powerful word, I've chosen to publish these shots, because they reflect with quite a lot of accuracy my situation in this place. This absolute love to my life and surroundings. The beautiful people around me and the exciting projects I get into and passionately defend, the feeling part of a whole. But also the despair, the uncertainty coming from my limited rights, the financial struggle, the hopes for a more dignifying life. I want a sunny window, a job that allows me to make a change, a guest room, a life companion and a cat.
Picture number one prevails, always, but it is human to feel. We are filled with hopes and we have to be prepared for disappointment, not only because we have expectations, sometimes it is exhaustion of not seeing the new screen coming, and discover new obstacles on the way... The efforts bring a lot of victories and we learn from the defeats.

Here I am, two years later, no new screen. The same clear goal, the same obstacles, the same uncertainty. 
But here I am, too, crying for change. For the change I am hoping for.

visual hazards?

I bike a lot, and it actually often awakes thoughts, sometimes whole soliloquies.
The last one was about the values in the community I grew up in. It was composed in its beginnings by people in their early 20s working in what is known as white collar jobs. For companies the right wing parties find so important for the economy. Everything was in a sort of acceptable balance until the sign of the times started bringing new neighbours adding more diversity in our uniformed "married couple, middle class-two children" average. As we kids grew up, we started to incorporate our own value system and morals to the existing  ones and some new neighbours came to prove that living with differing values was just as fine.
Things can be experienced  by hearing, speaking.... But some came visually  and one was once our new neighbour, unmarried, who worked in the fashion industry. He used to have many female visits and engaged in very long and loud sexual relationships (I remember me hearing the shouting  going on in the middle of the night). This was part of the noise hazard and people complained, yet, it didn't cease. Sure nobody dared interrupting in the middle of the night and he just  probably got a firm passive agressive letter from the neighbour's council.
Once and only once his stunningly gorgeous partner dared going to the swimming pool downstairs. And she dared to go topless. In the future other guests also dared the same thing, but this lady was the very first case.
That was a very big breach in the community's implicit pool dress code. I should say there were very clear written rules at the pool's door, but none made explicit mention about being topless and in Barcelona it was and it is an acceptable thing to go topless on the beach, however, doing that in your private property, with your trusted neighbours suddenly seemed to be a big no-no. Needless to say, she was kicked out on the spot. The pool rules updated  accordingly.
As a pre-teenager I could probably understand why that was the topping on the cake for our rather conventional family oriented community (he and his many "girlfriends" were on the spotlight already...), but I couldn't understand, objectively, how that was an issue, when kids had already seen boobs on beaches and adults were over that... were they? Who were they visually protecting?

Boobie bouncy castle!

And that thought lingered on during my bike ride. An image speaks more than a 1000 words. So what was this toned lady lying topless transmitting?
What were those families trying to protect? The uniformity? She did something they never  did, she failed to contextualise and adapt to the environment, not only with her boobs. She was an unmarried, childless, hot woman lying among classic Mediterranean mommas. But, was she a threat?

Since I am studying hazards, while riding my bike I started thinking of behaviours that could be a hazard (like loud love making- it can disturb your sleep, thus becoming a health hazard) but in society in general, isn't it amazing  that some visualisations of every day things can be considered a threat, a hazard to ideology? A guy walking around with a svastika is unacceptable, in Germany it is illegal. It represents a past, an ideology of a very damaging kind. It represents genocide, intolerance, violence. How can the sight of boobs affect your moral, your health, your well being? 
I mention because it is an issue many have, lately I see a lot of posts circulating about mommies sticking their boobies out to breast feed in public places. Regardless of how pleasant the sight would be according to your taste, esthetics or even maybe morals. How is that a threat? Should I start a plattform to complain about Crocs, then?!

And then I wondered. We often judge by looks. How a person looks triggers certain judegement according to your view of the world. To me, the image of a man in a suit and a tie means that they are more likely to prioritise money before any other values. They are not to be trusted. Or shall I jockingly ask: why did they never banned Speedos when they leave no room for imagination?

How is this relevant? We can measure sound hazards, air hazards, even physical hazards (if a building blocks the light or if a mine harms the close environment) 
So certain beautiful images (are boobies not beautiful to someone?, can the human body provocate rejection to someone like the svastika example?) can damage the carriers of  certain morals. And morals have a very wide area of subjective/cultural nature. How do we acquire them, how come do we modify them?
 Fascinating, nicht wahr?

shifting attention

Delay a hot issue one week and interest shifts from the new king of Spain to the World Cup. Oh, Spain, bless that football bliss that makes you feel strong and proud... Woops, and now your team does't seem to show much hope. Time to look inside and go back to those many things that need to be done. 
People in Spain are talking about their right to decide a republic when, a few years ago, when they had their right to decide on a new government, an enourmous majority chose those who helped bring back the monarchy back in the fascist times. Sweet irony, also when a region is also facing that government, asking for their right to choose. That government has managed to bring the country closest to dictatorship than ever, disguised in investment, real state and banking. People still think that the guys with ties are the reliable ones. Or with crowns, for the matter... 

I live in Australia now, and I feel politically sorry for them and directly affected by their policies (as a second-class resident). 
I've experienced the conservative win both in OZ and NZ. Always surrounded by people who felt sorry for that as well, whose ideas represent what I call "a conscious and responsible citizen", and yet, we are minority...
When I lived in Barcelona, still officially part of Spain I always felt like I was married to a country for their convenience, but at least, there, I had a voice. In Australia I support a certain view but I have no voice. Hence, I defend and let my voice be heard for what I feel closest to and feel it belongs to me as much as any other Aussie: Mother Nature, the environment, Australia's unique and delicate diversity. There alone is a lot to do. A lot to educate. A lot of old patterns of thought  need changing, those patterns help damage the soil, the air and that thing so many people love talking about so much: the economy. 
Economy has an etymological root of keeping households. Gnomos in Greek is knowledge-study
Ecology, however, points to the interrelations between species. Logos in Greek is the logic, the practical approach.
My logos: We are energy and we live from energy, too. As humans we need food, electricity, fuel and other sources of energy in order to be strong, work more efficiently, travel from A to B. Our sources of energy come from the Earth and from space (the sun, the air...). We plant seeds (oh, no, here we go again) in the dirt and they come from the darkness into the light to keep us alive. 
However, there are certain forms of energy that come solely from the darkness, from the insides of the Earth. The only picture alone of extracting from Earth´s insides already feels not quite as right. It feels like robbing from her, changing its (her) structure when there is so much available in the surface. 
It might be a silly metaphor but it shows me that we should have evolved enough to know better.  In Plato's terms, we are still in the dark caves, looking for the light. 
And I don't advocate change for the future generations alone. I do also for the improvements in society, the economy and for the end of alienating jobs that make some people have to go into the deep darkness, risking ther health and sometimes their lives. I do it for our right to evolve.
Those corporations are using us to get richer. And you vote them back. 

I know I have no voting voice but if only I could let that majority see... In the meantime I always repeat myself by asking people to change their habits slowly. Bike or walk to work, change your bank for an ethical one, change your eletricity provider for one that offers clean energy, reduce your meat intake and choose quality (free range) over quantity, refuse to buy packaged foods, make sure you don't support deforestation (palm oil everyone) and always keep your eyes open to let your voice be heard in your everyday choices.

So strange that a massive football event is making me rethink all of this
I just needed to let this one go...