Favourite sounds

The sound of:
- the voice of my loved one telling me sweet things
- soft sheets when you turn to your other side while being half asleep
- the banjo. Don't know why but I love this instrument. It has a mystical sound from other times and worlds
- swallows at the end of a summer day
- the coffee machine on a lazy morning
- hot water from the shower on your skin after a cold day
- the husky voice of an attractive man (favourite in this category: Lee Pace)
- the breathing of dancers
- a warm breeze through the leafs
- storm and rain against the windows when you're sitting safely at home
- raindrops on your umbrella
- a cool drink being poured when you're thirsty

cliché but nevertheless:
- the waves on the beach
- a child laughing
- good music

Today

So, today is the day that I'm supposed to go to the library during the whole day. But it's 24 degrees Celsius out there in april, so what can you do? Exactly...sit outside.

There are even swallows flying over. This reminds me to make a list of favourite sounds in the world later on. The sound of swallows is pretty high on that list. It reminds me of carefree summerdays. Returning from a day on the beach. Stepping under the shower to wash the sand away. The smell of lotion on my burnt skin. Putting on a lovely summer dress and sandals to go out for dinner when the sun is going down. Haaa...how I long for vacation. I want to go to Italy, but I'm putting of the horrible searchwork on the internet, let alone thinking about how I'm going to pay for it all.

After spending 3 crazy days at work (including nightmare scenarios in which everything goes wrong) and also being away during the evenings it feels like I have to come down to earth after spending a year in chaotic space. Slowly waking up. Eating left-overs for breakfast and drinking filthy Senseo coffee because were out of our usual lovely-tasting bio coffee. Taking stock of the mess in my house. I have to do some groceries:
- croissants
- fresh fruits
- eggs
- peanut butter
- good coffee
I'm noticing a new obsession with food lately. It started when when boss's husband cooked for us during 3 days in Normandy. He is the best cook I know. The food is just simple, beautiful and pure. No funny stuff, just plain food and herbs and sauses and dressings in the exact combination of excellence and deliciousness. He did his shopping at the Lidl for crying out loud. If you can do that and still cook so heavenly it's just plain masterly. I love food when the taste is pure. When you have the time to study the delicious colours and textures and tastes. This is why I also love Nigella Lawson. She creates that awareness with food. And she doesn't give a shit about doing it by the rules or originally or gaining/losing weight. She just loves good food. And her descriptions of textures and tastes and colours are almost erotic.

Funny: while I'm writing this, I'm sitting on our flat roof in the sun and I'm looking into my neighbour's house. Since a few weeks I'm starting to become more aware about the people who live on my block. I still think it's weird that people are leading an entire life at a few feet and I don't know anything about them. So this neighbour is a big bulky man with a tattoo on his right bicep. He's listening to rock&roll music and all the while he's vacuuming and washing the dishes like mad, while singing to the music. And somewhere on my right I'm hearing a women's voice saying: "caliente!" I didn't know I had a Spanish speaking neighbour!

It's good to be back on earth.

Ruthless

We did some dance workshops at schools this week. I absolutely love working with young children. I know I'm going to be a primary school teacher one day. Just not now yet. But children can be ruthless also. There was this one group of 10 year olds. The group was far too big for the dancers actually, and their teacher wasn't helping one bit. There were 2 dancers. One of them is a tiny, supersweet Italian girl. She doesn't speak Dutch, but she was there anyway to help out. Just before this workshop she was telling me how happy she was to be joining this project. She didn't like being pushed around as a dancer. Sometimes she felt like a doll and these teachers and choreographers would pull her limbs and she would stand up straight and try to perfect her technique but it served nothing. In this project she felt liberated and she had fun.

And so during this workshop there was a group of mean little boys. They were standing in the back corner with their arms crossed making fun of all the other children who were trying to follow the Dutch dancer in front of the group. My Italian girl was standing somewhere in the middle between the other kids, showing them the movements, helping them out with a smile on her face. But she noticed the mean boys also and it was bugging her. And she couldn't communicate with them because of the language problem. So instead she tried to reach out to them as she did with the other children. With a big generous smile on her face she did a little dance as to encourage the boys to follow. And then this one boy did this: he copied her dance with a big mocking expression on his face. And when he finished the other boys would burst into laughter. She flinched. And staring blankly into space she continued her work.

So what about these boys? Are they really mean-spirited? Are these the boys that grow up to be mean bankers who steal from poor innocent people? Can they still change into funloving carefree human beings? I don't know. I remember doing some mean stuff when I was little too. I wasn't exactly a bully, but it wouldn't be fair to say that I never bullied anyone during my childhood. There was this new boy in my class when I was 13. He fled from Iran being a Christian. He was weirdlooking and smelly and strange to me. We would make fun of him. I feel so ashamed remembering that. It must have been so hard on this poor boy. It's an evil mix of fear of what doesn't match your standards and peer pressure.

There's even a worse story actually than this one. In my primary school there was a boy who didn't match our standards either. He had such white skin and a shreeky voice and he would cry and get angry over the smallest things. We was bullied heavily by almost the entire school. A long time ago, but long after primary school, his mother met my mother in the supermarket. She told my mom that he was such an unhappy boy still and that life was so hard on him. And she told my mother that I stood up for him sometimes in school and she was grateful for that. A few years ago he committed suicide. Alone. In the forest. With a knife. And as hard as I try, I can't recollect any memories of standing up for him. I just remember making fun of him.

Resolution

I know I've been lacking inspiration for quite some time now. I'm having my moments, but I know I can do better. I think I need to kick myself in the butt from time to time. It helps when I take a peek on all the inspired, beautiful, admirable blogs I've put in my "follow" list. In my few hours of alone-time I swiflty rush through them, just to realize that it takes a different mindset to make this kind of stuff. It's not just taking a few hours in between appointments or busy schedule (like I'm doing now). That's really not how it works (at least for me it isn't). It's slowing down entirely. And I'm not doing that. It's always so difficult to balance your personal work with relationships, a job to earn money and chores around the house. Of course it is, really. It's good to realize that. I need to slow down again. Spend more time alone, not feeling guilty about saying no to friends and family when they ask to see me. Or doing things for myself when my boyfriend's at home. I know they won't go away. But still, it feels like I'm not being fair when I don't call them back or give them the attention they need. It need this though. To grow.

So here's what I'm going to do. Next day I have to myself I will spend an entire day at the library. That's the mindset I see when I look at the other blogs. It comes from spending an entire day at the library. Looking at pictures from children's books, photographs in books about plants and flowers, reading short stories and poetry. This is my resolution, the kick in my own butt :).

So you know where I'll be when you look for me.
Until next time!
Love

List

Things I'm grateful for this week:

1. Getting a new fresh haircut.
2. The sunshine when you're sitting in the park celebrating your friend's birthday.
3. Realizing that drinking fresh water from the tap is a privilege.
4. The softness of the pillows and sheets from our own bed.
5. Spending time in the blooming garden of my parents in law.
6. Discovering a new band: Bowerbirds.
7. Studying theology books.

Picture

I found this somewhere on the internet. It's from Kirsi Neuvonen, a Finnish artist. Her work is beautiful, like this picture. You can find her website right here:
http://www.copperfield.fi/index_en.htm

Another one from Tolstoy

"Boredom: the desire for desires."

In the city

One of the best things about living anonymously in the city is this:
Sometimes you walk around with a heavy heart. (this is a term which I prefer in the Dutch translation, by the way. When you say "heavy heart" it means your heart weighs a lot. In the Dutch version you say "een verzwaard hart." It means that something has been added to your heart to make it more heavy. It's being weighed down by something). You're walking and thinking, feeling anxious, scared, alienated, stressed. All these thoughts are going through your mind, making you feel foggy. The scenery flows by, but you don't notice it, you don't see the houses, the street stones, the pieces of grass between the tiles. All you see is the cloud in your head. And then, all of a sudden a stranger looks at you and smiles. Just smiles. For no reason. He breaks through the cloud. The stranger has no idea. But he just single-handedly made your heart feel lighter again by doing the most simple thing in the world: smiling at you.

Do you remember that? The last time a stranger smiled at you for no reason and it made you feel better?

I'm not sure, but I remember that this idea occured in the movie Constantine also. I believe the idea was that when you see a stranger and feel lighter afterwards, this was an angel. And when you see someone that gives you the creeps, it's a demon. I like to think about that whenever that happens: I was just visited by an angel. (I try to forget about the demon-part :)

This makes me think about another thing. Sometimes this one happy moment can be 1000 more powerful than a whole period of unhappiness. Do you know what I mean? It's as if you get to start over. It doesn't matter anymore, because you feel better now. You see this beautiful sunset and you just sigh. Everything is behind you now. You let it go.

Remember to smile at strangers sometimes. It helps make the world a nicer place.

From work

Tales from the first rays of sunlight

1. Approx. 2 weeks ago

It's the first really warm day of the year. I have this enormous list of things to do including vacuum cleaning, dishes and taking paper and glass out to the recycling station. Instead I go and lie on the tiny bench in my tiny square of a garden. The sunlight warms my skin. I watch the blue sky through the ivy leaves that hover over me. I just lie there and do nothing. A ladybug visits my right arm. I let it stay there for a while. I put my laptop beside me and play Yann Tiersen's CD Tabarly. The warmth of the sun makes me feel lazy.

Later in the afternoon I go out to do one of my favourite things in the world: seeing a movie at the cinema all by myself. As I cycle through the streets I see people sitting on terraces, laughing and drinking. I park my bike and buy a single ticket for a movie about Russian writers. I snuggle up in a red chair in the dark in the middle of the room. And during the film the most amazing thing happens. Through all the cracks in the walls and doors of the movie theatre, there is this smell coming into the room. It's the odour of a rain shower after a warm spring day. It's beautiful, I can smell water from the sky on warm soil and street stones. I cycle back home through shiny wet streets with empty terraces.

2. Between 2 weeks ago and today

There is this thing the first rays of sunlight do to you. All of a sudden you start to get flashes of memories from holidays in warm countries. I travelled through Brazil for 3 months once. It was the most intense experience of my life. I can't remember a time in my life when I was happier or living more in the moment than maybe during my early childhood. It's weird that 3 months of your adult life can have the same effect on you as a happy childhood. But it's the truth, my truth. I still hope to experience it once more. Until then, I have to do with the memories. They come and go. Sometimes I consciously take a moment to let the memories fill my head. When I look at pictures or listen to some of the music I listened to back then. And sometimes I am just overwhelmed by a flash of memory on the most random moments.

So now I'm walking to the grocery store down the street on a sunny day. And all of a sudden I'm standing at the corner of a street in Rio de Janeiro. I'm passing a newspaper stand. Cars are racing down the street. I'm wearing a yellow top, a black skirt with flowers and flip-flops. I'm walking there all by myself. There is the filthy sweet intoxicating smell of the city en the hot air sticks to my skin. I feel tiny and yet I feel like I'm at the centre of the universe. And all I have on my mind, the only thing in the world that's on my mind, is what I'm going to eat next. I lust for pao de quesos (little round cheesy bread things). And in the midst of that moment, all is mine. I own the city, the Brazilian men talking and sitting on their chairs on the pavement, I own that funny smell, the barefooted children, the asphalt, the green mountains with the monkeys in the background, the sun shining on the people and houses, I own it all. And most of all, I own time. Time stretches out before me eternally. I've never felt like I've had so much time before. It stretches and stretches on.

3. Today

My head is all fogged and fuzzy and it's been that way for far too long now. I'm stressed and tired. I want to go to the hairdressers to get a new haircut. But the hairdresser says they're fully booked for today. There goes my plan. What do I do next? I stand beside my bicycle thinking about it, cursing the hairdresser. I feel tired and would like to go home, but what can I do there besides mope and feel lonely? So I head for the forest instead, because it's really a beautiful sunny day. I'm already getting tired of the thought of how far I have to cycle, but I force myself to do it. I do allow myself to take it as slow as I like, though.

As I park my bike and start walking through the trees, I realize this was a good idea. I'm letting the tiredness come over me entirely, allowing it to be present. I find a beautiful spot where I can sit on a tree trunk and watch the sun shine through the freshly grown, light green leaves of spring. I notice a tiny little mouse walking through the leaves a few inches from me. I love this little funny creature. I'm yawning and rubbing my face from tiredness, but it's okay. I go on my way again and find this coffee place in the middle of the forest. I walk inside and it's beautiful. Wooden tables and brick walls, freshly home-made bread and coffee. I sit in the corner, drinking coffee, eating sweet bread and reading a book. The sun shines so brightly through the window on the white pages of my book that I can hardly read any more and I'm squinting my eyes. I rip a piece from the bread with two fingers and then I dip it in the coffee. I watch the dough expand from soaking up the light brown moist and then I take a bite. This is when my conciousness starts to return. I become focused again. I lick my finger and press it on the remaining seeds from the bread on my plate. I sigh and it feels like the first time I'm taking my breath in a long time. As I exhale, some of the tension goes away from my body. Not all of it, but still, I feel better.

Tolstoy

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."
Leo Tolstoy

Chores

I feel like I have been lacking inspiration these last couple of weeks. Things have been stressfull at work, for a start. As a result I've been having stressfull dreams every night for 14 nights in a row.

Are you familiar with these? In those dreams you're trying to run and organize and follow some schedule, but it all goes wrong. You take the wrong train and you see the landscape through the windows taking you further and further away from where you're supposed to be, feeling more anxious every minute. Or you're just at work, calling, emailing, answering questions from your boss and everything goes fast, so fast. You can't keep track and you're always one step behind. I hate those dreams because they are a perfect resemblance of my true feelings during the day in such periods. And it's exactly those feelings I'm trying to escape while sleeping and - supposedly - resting. So I wake up still feeling stressed.

In my spare time I've been doing things that have been on my to-do list for ages. I thought that would tidy up my mind. And it does kind of, a little. It feels good to erase them from my everlasting list of trying to make my house look like the perfect beautiful home I want it to be. But in the end it's just doing chores. I'm not the kind of person that likes to fix things around the house. And it's also a restless feeling to strive for that perfection. Because you never really get there. I tend to give so much attention to the things that annoy me, that I forget my house is beautiful already. It's the same with people. You know your boyfriend would be perfect if it wasn't for this or that trait. And when you spend time to fix it, it just makes you more restless, because you never can seem to change it. Maybe I can't really compare a loved one with a house, haha :). But it kind of feels the same. It's never enough. But you gradually get there. I need to remind myself that work around the house is doing chores and therefore not inspiring. I know to some it is, but not to me. I try to delude myself into thinking it is sometimes: "I'm sure I'll feel better when this will be fixed." So I go ahead spending all my energy in fixing it. And afterwards I get tired of course, being all suprised about that.

But this weekend I was pulled away from my chores and work because of my family pressing to see me. I was annoyed by that at first, but I feel much better now after spending a few days with them. Just walking the same street you walked to school every day when your world was so tiny, the street being such a big part of it. Seeing the first signs of spring. That always brings back memories from my childhood. I don't know why, maybe because I was born in the spring. Watching pictures of my parents' wedding day and listening to the stories that go with them. "It was a cold day". "I remember my sister bringing that weird Polish friend without even telling me. We didn't have enough money for a bouquet with real flowers. They were made out of plastic. But we were happy and in love."

I did have two things piled up in my mind to tell you in these last weeks. I'll have to remember them for later, because it's late and I still have to do some chores. Bleegh. See, the list never gets empty. So you better just put it aside from time to time and forget all about it. :)