Tag: mind

Day 1764, gone back.

A lot of days in my life, and I assume this goes for others to, are not so eventful. I file these day’s directly into the big cardboard box behind my desk, and not in one of its drawers. Today was more eventful, well… at least for a white, middle aged man in a rich country.

Last week I slipped of the road with my car, nothing spectacular, I could still drive home with the broken suspension. The car was only 5 years old, but it was more expensive to repair then it was worth. This fact is kind of stupid, I bought an electric car to be more gentle to the environment, and now this car will be tossed away with relative minor damage, not so good for the environment. These modern cars are all so complex, and have sensors all over the place that I wouldn’t know where to start, if I decided to fix it myself. I can go on about this, the point is that I had to arrange a bunch of things today to get rid of the car, talk to the insurance, and the bank, bring the license plates to some office. It was, at the end, an unceremonious goodbye, kinda sad, it was a good partner for all these years. For me a car is not just a thing, I don’t say that it has a personality, but I do project one on it, thought the car doesn’t seem to care.

I am also busy at work. I restored wooden boats for over 15 years, and now I restore old windows and doors. I can tell you, you people that are not carpenters, that it is a big change. It is not more difficult or easier, you just use a whole set of tools that I as a boat builder hardly ever used. In boat building you also use more “feeling”, in restoring windows and doors you measure more. This part takes up 8 hours of my day, and today I also said goodbye to my car, but I also bought a new car.

I was stressed about the accident from last week. Partly because of the realization that I had to do a lot of stuff that I didn’t want to do, but also because the slip I made came kinda sudden. It happened on a relative safe place, but it could also have happened where there is more traffic, or the ditch I landed in could have been on of the the slopes of the hills I drive over every day. It’s just the suddenness of the event that scared me a little, you realize once again that driving is dangerous, and that you never think about that.

The stress was there, a car that has to be tossed away, more pollution, and the joy of buying a new car. An eventful day you might say, but at least today was a good day to toss away that what was broken end exchange it with something new.

This poem was the inspiration for today: Day 1481.

There are these millions of lines

crisscrossing, in the empty space

where my thoughts, my mind

lies calmly

on this

tension

1

Day 1763, dis like.

I have been reading around 800 of my old poems by now. A lot of them make no sense to me without the picture that it belongs to. The one I chose for today is from Day 1576.

Two flowers behind

the window in front of them

while rain and sun play

This one I personally like, even without the picture and meaning. The knowledge that what you like at the moment of creation might be disliked a few moments, hours, day’s, weeks or months later is…sobering. With my writing I have little pretensions, I can’t really judge it so this makes it easier to accept that I might dislike it the next day. I still have a lot to learn and as soon as the money allows it I will hire some online teacher that can give me some pointers.

With my picture taking it is similar, the difference is that I don’t dislike my old pictures, they are just out of fashion. What I mean with that is that I go thru phases, I have periods that I like saturated colors, and other times more muted or black and white. This changes all the time and I always love the faze I am in.

With photography I also don’t mind what others might think of it, with my poetry I would mind. But like photography, poetry is also subjective. There are some rules in photography, but a good photographer can brake those rules and still make it look good. I guess that’s also possible in poetry, but I am still in a phase that I enjoy the process, smile about my own ingenuity, and don’t understand what I was righting about three weeks later.

In the pictures below you can see that i like to get close to the things that are interesting, and hardly ever get seen.

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Day 1762, impostor.

Have you ever heard of the “impostor syndrome? It’s when you have the feeling that you are not capable of doing the job you are doing, but the people around you don’t seem to notice your alleged deceit. I have the feeling that a lot of people feel like that every now and then. I have had that feeling, but if others trust you, well…what can go wrong? It is something that plays in your own head, you probably do a good (enough) job, you just doubt yourself, or you are more of a perfectionist that realizes that you are not reaching your own goals.

But in some way, doubting yourself because you expect more is not so bad. I even think that everybody, or at least a lot of people, are impostors, but they just don’t see it that way. A lot of people project an air of confidence and knowledge, specially when you just interact with them for a short while. You probably had these kind of colleagues, when you just started at a job you are all intimidated and impressed, but after half a year you realize that they screw up as much as you do, sometimes even more.

Look at what happened in America on the 6th of January, this big, so called impressive, police apparatus, with tons of confident people screwed up big time. If Iran had known that they could just shopper in a few dozen commando’s, and take over the whole government of America, they would have done that. They spend billions of dollars on security and intelligence gathering, and it seems that they are all incompetent, and the sad thing is that none of them realize that they are impostors, they just find excuses.

It is sobering when you see that a “professional” organization can do such a bad job, it makes you wonder. I am 48 now, that’s not old, but not young either, but there are leaders of counties that are my age, and I assume that they also just try to do a good job. I assume that much older world leaders are not much different then the rest of us, have a look at the results of all there confident posturing and pointing the way. I think there is no one in the world that really knows what is going on, and we all just pretend, because we think the others are on to us.

The poem that inspired me was from Day 1452

It looks impossible

to do

~

so you fake it

If you look at the world from a distance, you realize that it’s just a silly place. That street in your neighborhood where all the screw ups live, that kind of planet. Can you imagine that if the aliens came and asked: who is your leader? That we have to bring him to the whit-house and show them Tr…. that’s the person on top of the pyramid…the pinnacle of man kind…our best example…

1

Day 1761, roots.

I moved to a new house, city, or country on average every two, to three years I think. I don’t know why, I can always point to a reason, but if you do it so regular, you might as well assume that it’s just in my character. I am easy satisfied, but after a while, I will still pretend to be satisfied, but jump at the first chance to close the door behind me.

Some people like to find out where their little quirks come from. Where the first seed is sown, a little bit to far from the center. There have been made some attempts, by professionals, as well as the not so, to find the origin and, if necessary, a cure. I later found out, or concluded for my self, that all that doctors can do is to postpone the inevitable, and if they are good they, will help you dealing with that fact.

It is really easy to start digging in your past for the root of it all. The problem is that if you find a root, you tend to see where that one is going, all the while forgetting that an average tree has more than one root. All the roots are important for a tree to stand tall, and some of them might be rotten, butt even the roots that are rotten might keep you upright, when the wind is coming from that specific direction.

The poem for today is from Day 1425

Don’t stare

to long

at the door

~

it might

slowly

disappear

in the wall

I don’t have this problem, some might say that that’s the problem with me. For me it’s the norm, and I always wonder how people can live in the same place, with the same job, for years and years. In my world, there is something “wrong” with them, maybe they just stare to long at opportunities, wondering if they want to, or dare.

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Day 1760, a past line.

We are

on the same

line

~

but

still far

apart

This poem is from Day 1421. I have no way of proving this, it is just an idea. The idea of the poem is that we are all capable of coming to similar conclusions, in similar circumstances. Lets say that you are a liberal progressive, if you, for whatever circumstances, move to a more conservative area, and start hanging out with the people that live there, there is a chance that your idea’s slowly change. Our first reaction is off course that, that wouldn’t happen to you, but are you so sure, that you have not changed in the last 10 or 20 years. Maybe not in your political orientation, but it would be strange if you didn’t adapt some habits and customs from the people you live with that are different from the once you had in a different time.

Fashion is a good example, we all think we are choosing the clothes , and hairstyle we like, but if you look back long enough, you will realize that, that’s not completely true. There is no reason to believe that this also works for your thoughts and idea’s. Your thoughts and idea’s are more private than the clothes you wear, so it is not so easy to look back in time, and compare. You can’t interview your past self, to you can find out how you changed, maybe your lucky, and have an old diary. Just remember that you change slowly, and you will change again. Even if this is not true, it is still healthy for you, and society to realize that what you feel is true, is true from where, and when, you are.

This place where you are, is represented in the poem by a line. Maybe a straight line, maybe it is a circle or oval. We might be far apart in our idea’s and values, but “we are on the same line” in regards to our believe in our truths, and we share the believe that we would, or have ever, changed. We might share more with others, than we would likely admit.

2

Day 1759, island.

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1406. If you click on the link you will see the picture that inspired me to write that poem. When I write these short poems I try to describe the picture, and at the same time I want to put some philosophy in there. I have lived at a place that was once an island, but because there is a bridge now, I wondered if it is still an island. There are all kinds of opinions about this question, but for me it didn’t feel like an island. Your stuck on an island when it storms, we could just leave when we wanted. It’s a silly question, but the poem can also be seen with a philosophers eye.

I live

on an Island

~

but

there is this bridge

to the rest

of the world

~

I sometimes

wonder

if

I really live

on an Island

We humans, I don’t know if other animals do this to, are good in getting stuck in our own heads. We all know what it feels like to worry about, for example, the bills that have to be paid, what your knew boss and colleagues thinks of you, or your new lover. You can think of many other examples that make us think and ponder way to much in our own heads.

There are of course enough legitimate reason to worry and stress about a situation, like when a family member has to go to a hospital, or your marriage is coming to an end. But if you have lived for a while, you can tell yourself that you have worried about paying the bills for years now, and you are still alive, you always managed. And that new job, when you just started you had a reason to question your skills, but now you have proven yourself, you don’t have to fall back to these old habits. And worry about a new lover… well, if you are afraid to live alone after, lets say your 30th birthday, than you have bigger problems.

When it is storming outside, and your are stuck on your little island in your head, you have to remember that there is still a bridge to the mainland. A bridge to family members or friends that can help you. Even if you have no one on the other side of the bridge, just the act of crossing it can be a big help. I always promote to people the idea that they have to try to broaden their horizon. When your stuck on your little island, you have only access to what is on that island. If that is the only knowledge you have, that can help you out of a bind, and it is not working, you have to put new knowledge in your head.

I like the island metaphor, but I also have a metaphor with a car. A lot of people have problems with metaphor’s, they tell me halfway: but I am not car. If you one of them, then I am sorry.

The metaphor goes like: When your car breaks down, and you don’t know nothing about cars, then you have a problem understanding what is going on, or explaining the problem to an other. The only thing you can say is that it stopped and no longer works. Lets now say that after this experience you take a course in car mechanics, and you read some books about cars and how they work. With this knowledge, you can maybe find the problem with your car, the next time it stops working. You know all the parts, and you can maybe see witch one is broken, and if you can’t find the problem you can tell the mechanic more accurate what happened, and point him or her to the right direction.

The car is of course yourself, when we brake down, and stay on our island of knowledge, we might never find out what is going on. If you start reading some books about us, humans, and how we work, you might find clues about your own problem much easier, or tell a friend clearer what is going on with you.

P.S. I feel a little stuck in my head, had a demanding job at work, and it seems that I have totaled my car in a minor crash with a ditch that was pleasantly dug besides the slippery road. So in my head I feel that I have rambled on for to long…

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Day 1758, same old.

Fifteen years ago I moved to Norway, and though I easily adept wherever you drop me, I have no problems with living here, for all these years. There are a few things that I miss, Norway is more paternalistic, Holland is more liberal. I don’t drink much alcohol but you can not buy it here after eight o’clock, and hard liquor is only available I a few stores. They probable have their reasons but as a grownup man I want to decide myself if and when I buy my alcohol. It’s just an example, but it shows a mentality.

The thing is, when I am in Holland visiting family, and eating the food I missed, or doing other things I can’t do in Norway, the pleasure is there when I finally have the chance, but it also feels that it was only yesterday that I did these things. It’s the same with family, you know them so well that 1 or 2 years away can’t erase the years you spend together. Time is a strange thing, it feels like life is put on pause in Holland when I hop in a plane back to Norway, and it gets unpaused when I am back in Holland.

Maybe it has something to do with me and how I stand in life, the memories of all the things I have done in the past are often enough for me, these memories are a good substitute for any cravings I have. My girlfriend sometimes misses things more than I do, she wanted to live in a city again, for example. One of my arguments against it was that I have lived in cities. I have had that experience, she did to. If we would go back we would just pick up where we where before, and it would not feel refreshing, and new.

If you want to go back to a place where you where before, reality will start where the mundane life you had there, was paused when you left, and not at the “idealized idea” of what life was back then. We live close to a city again, and though I don’t really mind, I drive again over the same roads I have driven over for many years, years ago.

The inspiration for today cam from Day 1403.

There

are many islands

I

will never see

~

but

I have been

on one

so

I know

how it feels

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Day 1757, school of life.

As a carpenter, I sometimes have apprentices. As a teacher I have to try to imagine what they are going to do, so I can stop them when they might cut their finger in two instead of the peace of wood. I have to look at their movements and expressions in the face, is it showing doubt, or confidence? They can both be dangerous.

Outside of these kinds of teacher vs student situations, we also like to “imagine” the movements of the people we meet and live with. We are specially interested in the movements of their thoughts, and like to predict them, and why they do the things they do. The problem is that we don’t like to be judged like a student when we talk with the people we meet and/or care about. There are of course all kinds of signals that can lead the astute observer to predict what the other thinks or is going to do. Just read stories about con artists and their ability to “read” people. But it is not polite to do it, at-least not to much.

The biggest problem we face while we interpret the other, is our own lack of objectivity. When I tell my apprentice not to put their finger at this or that place, and I see their finger starting to move their, I can intervene. I know from my own objective experience that your finger wants to go there, but you have to resist that urge, that’s what I have to teach the apprentice, and I can do this objectively. When they are young they will often complain and tell me that they know that, but their body language tells different, and to protect their fingers I have to insist and tell them that they are wrong.

As a teacher you have, most of the time, more knowledge, and because of this you can “predict” what your apprentice is going to do. The problem is that there are no teachers in life, or living. We are all apprentices, and as such it is difficult to maintain a healthy teacher vs student relation with anybody when the thing you have to learn is…living. There are many people that have really good ideas about life, and they can be worth it to be studied and taken serious. But good advice is not life, even Gandhi had horrible idea’s, and mother Teresa is also no saint in all regards.

Life is a project we are all working on in our own pace, and we will meet a lot of people that know a shortcut to finish life’s project, but look around, and look at the state of the world. It is better then before but there was never and is not now, someone that has finished “project life”…without cutting their fingers.

Today writing was inspired by a poem I wrote for Day 1400

I don’t think

there is anyone

that knows

what you see

~

but it is

in our nature

to imagine

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Day 1756, flat.

An empty mind

makes nice echo’s

This is a poem I wrote on Day 1396, January last year.

An empty mind

makes nice echo’s

This is a poem I wrote on Day 1396, January last year.

I have always had an interest in conspiracy theories. I remember reading books from Däniken, about aliens, and I also bought books about other kinds of conspiracies, more general. I was in my early twenties and it was kind of exiting reading about things where no one talks about. This was all before the internet became a big thing, so it was not possible for me to get sucked in, on a downwards spiral, on you tube. I soon started seeing all kinds of inconsistencies, and started reading books that debunked a lot of these strange, but interesting, and exiting idea’s.

The strange thing is that I was still young, and knew little about the world around me. I still had to learn a lot about politics, society, history and so on. So my world view was still kind of empty, but when I read these conspiracy books I enjoyed shoving it in the face of my empty worldview. I think I just liked to “shove it” into something, like young people often do. It is also the way these stories are told, there is a constant undertone of hidden secrets and powers. These hidden powers control the world, a world that I just started to learn, but more important, still didn’t.

That was my small laps into insanity, but it is useful, I have my own experience, though it is 28 years ago, so I don’t know how reliable my memory is of that time. As I said before, I am still interested in conspiracy theories, and specially the mindset of people that believe these idea’s. Last year I watched a lot of you tube video’s about people that debunk flat earth believes. There is an overwhelming mount of evidence that the world is round, but there are thousands of people that believe otherwise. I have to tel one story, because it is still with me. They asked a flat earther why he didn’t hop on a bout and sailed to the edge to take some pictures, as proof that the earth is flat. He said that they patrol the seas to stop this from happening. The interviewer then calculated that you need around 50.000 boats to stop anyone from entering the “forbidden” zone. You have to man these boats in shifts, they have to be maintained and build, millions of people have to be involved in that task…why has no one ever talked about this secret project? It is ridicules of course, but we people like to make our little tree houses to play and hide in, and as long as we keep our knowledge of the world as minimal as possible, we make sure we have enough room for loud voices to fill that empty dome.

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Day 1755, art.

I like going to modern art museums. I like to go, because of it’s popularity, it’s most of the time nice and quiet to walk around. I walk around in other buildings to, looking at the details of it’s architecture and other details. But walking in a public building like that feels often awkward, that’s why I like to go to a museum. In a museum I can walk around, enjoy my surrounding, without feeling out of place.

I put meaning in my pictures, when I write a poem based on it, but I never take a picture with a particular poem in mind. I just take pictures, and surprise myself later. My girlfriend starts with a more elaborate plan when she makes her paintings, that’s another way to approach it. I never thought deep about why there are these different approaches, my first guess is, that it has to do with how our brains are wired. Another reason can be that I never learned how to take pictures, I know all the technical details, but a technically bad picture can still be good. Other photographers know more about light en moods and how to manipulate their gear to the fullest, and repeat that process. These are the kind of artist that plan their photo shoots, and they get at least a technically superior picture.

You see these different approaches in art museums to, blobs of colorful paint, detailed depictions of reality or beautifully made sculptures of nothings. I always look at them as beautiful accidents, like I take my pictures. I am always amazed when people tell all kinds of stories about the meaning of some of the details, the combination of colors, and why the artist did this or that. I personally think that if an artist has something to say with their art it should be “readable” with maybe some explanation, for everyone. If you have to tell what it means, then you should just tel people what you mean without wasting a canvas and paint.

I know that this is not fair. I read philosophy books that need some prior knowledge, and otherwise a lot of explanation. Maybe I miss that knowledge, regarding some of the modern art, to appreciate it in it’s fullest. But I don’t go to art museums to learn, I just enjoy the surrounding, the quietness and the architecture is often beautiful (and hopefully without meaning). And what’s hanging on the wall, can please the visual cortex to, and that’s a bonus.

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1375.

Modern art

seen

as a reflection

of life

is difficult

to understand

if you look at it

from the wrong

angle

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Day 1754, judgement.

I sometimes wonder why we people have such a hard time “showing their through colors”. I can of course dig around in myself to find out, and tell you what my “true” is, but I am not crazy.

Today’s poem is from Day 1336.

They turned off

their light

insight

I can’t see

just

dark eyes

I can’t imagine a person, who would tell everything they consciously know, and think at that moment, to an other person. There is of course no way you can tell, we can’t read minds so we assume that no one shows it all. Even if someone tells you all their darkest secrets, you still don’t know that for sure. We have to assume that we all have something hidden for the other.

Maybe this is the origin of the myth of the “soul-mate”. I would tell myself everything gladly, if I could meet myself, a soul-copy so to speak. There is no other like us, but what if you find a partner that comes close, one you can forge a bond with, a bond that is strong enough for you to let go of all that is cooped up in you. I don’t think relations , every kind of relation, would last long if you let it all go uncensored, even if love is in play…specially when love is in play. I am afraid that we all go to the grave with unspoken words.

It could also just be me, having this particular need. Maybe I have to become Catholic, and take the the judgment that I have sinned for granted.

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Day 1753, layers.

There are all kind of different people, when you meet them for the first time. Your first impression, and judgment, is the layer you make, for the most part your self, you “pressed” it on them. It is hard to judge someone you just meet without comparing what you see with what you have seen before. It is not something you do consciously, for the most part. Try, the next time, to look at someone new and don’t think: that’s a woman. “She” can turn around, and be a man with long blond hair. It is a simple example that shows that we make a judgment based on prior knowledge, in western societies, long hair is more associated with woman, we learned that. The same goes for other external, and internal signs, we see an outline, or hint of a character trade, and a judgment forms. The real person is hidden behind several layers, some you made, and some that the person you meet, made themselves, to hide behind.

The poem from today is from Day 1333.

I see several layers

when you paint

me

your picture

~

but why did you stop

I always look forwards, to the layers that come, when time passes.

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Day 1752, tired.

I live in Trondheim, a normal city in the middle of Norway. If you look at the map you will see that it is only 600km from the polar circle, around the same height as Fairbanks in the middle of Alaska. We have more of a sea climate here so it is not as cold as in Fairbanks, today it was -13. The thing that is strange here, something I am used to, but also not. It is the lack of sunlight. The first ten years in Norway I lived above the polar circle , and there you have some light between 10:00 and 13:00, but we didn’t see the sun for almost two moths. Here in Trondheim we have more daylight, but because I am at work during the day I can only see the sun in the weekends. I think there is a reason why people that live in the North are more mellow, specially compared with the more vibrant people that live closer to the equator. This is just a long way of telling you that today, at the end of the week, I am pretty tired and monotone.

Today I am not gonna write about one of my old poems. When I have little inspiration I will pick one of the books from Friedrich Nietzsche and pick a random aphorism and let my brain chew on that for a while. You can see that I have a separate tab on my blog about Nietzsche. He is not the only philosopher I like to read, but he is the one that spoke to me the most. People sometimes ask me what I like about him, and I have to admit that I have a hard time explaining it, specially when the person that ask me knows only little about philosophy. The problem is that there are no philosophers that stand alone and isolated in history. Every thinker, scientist or inventor stands on the shoulders of his or her predecessors. Nietzsche is one of the first philosophers who also was a psychologist, he is really good in dissecting the mind and pointing at the reasons why we do the things we do. But giving this as a reason is only half the story because attached to Nietzsche are all these predecessors and the people that came after him. Nietzsche is the spill in my world of philosophy, and the spill is important but so is the rest around it.

 

There are a lot of things we know better now, then before. I rather go to the doctor now then 2000 years ago, the same goes for traveling or just living in a house. All these things have improved over the years. What Nietzsche, off course, talks about, are the so called thinkers and moralizers. If you just pickup a book about the history of philosophy, you will soon realize that the Greek, 2500 years ago, already where walking in the direction we are still going. Around that time there where also other places around the world where people started to think about, and explain the world. Because I am born in the so called west, I recognize more in what the ancient Greek where writing back then then I do with what the thinkers from India or China wrote for instance. You can read text from Greek philosophers that are so modern, that a lot of people today would have problems agreeing with it, because it is to progressive.

We live in modern times but the barbarians are still among us, some are even rulers.

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Day 1751, looking back, forwards.

In 2016 I came back from a visit to my parents in law in America. My girlfriend is African American* so we were extra exited by what’s going to happen, specially if T…p would win. When we came back at the end of September we anxiously waited till the election where over. It was off course a big disappointment. The good thing is that I started this blog. I already had an other place where I posted my daily pictures and now I wanted a blog again to vent on. I made a whole series of photoshopped pictures of the situation in America and wrote about it. Now it is almost over, I wanted to wait with it but after what happened last night I might as well post it now. I re-upload most of the pictures I made in 2016, and I will tell something about it. I was hoping back then that the readers would understand the pictures, including all the details, but that didn’t happen.

*I asked my girlfriend if I could still use these words to describe her…mistake;-)

We took a drive from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, this is the most beautiful countryside in my opinion. We drove past this sign that welcomed us into Utah. I changed YOUtah into MEtah as is sign of the selfishness of so many people.
This is a building in Pittsburgh. I have studied the third Reich a lot, it is the best way to understand why well educated people turn into conspiracy crazed murderers. They where cleaning the building I guess, i took the opportunity to make it look like they just installed the sign for the new ruling party. The NSDAP stands for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
We visited Gettysburg, impressive. I changed the text on the building and put a leftover sign leaning against the canon. The text is from Abraham Lincoln and is well known and thru: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
This is some random street in America with the expected signs in support for the new leader. I added 6 things…
In the right corner you can see Lady Justice, in front i placed a sign that was standing in front of a beggar, it reads: Dirty Broke and hungry , anything helps .
This was in New York. These people where trowing away a bunch of fashion photo’s. I put all kinds of dictators on it, including one of T…p, maybe you see him. The massage is of course that they belong there.
This is Columbus, the one from the monument at Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. Columbus just landed here in the America’s, he had to call home, telling them that there was a little problem.
I found this really cool idea of some kind of public library in a bird cage. I put the “my country became to rich…I left”sign. It is from Loesje, a dutch initiative that started somewhere in the eighties. The put all kinds of thought provoking signs on random walls, very cool. I also put two fictitious books in there, written by T…p. One of them is called . My struggle, the English translation of the book by Hitler, mein kampf. (I just see that i spelled struggle wrong at the book cover…)
This was taken i some museum. I just changed a bunch of words on it, just look.
There where warning signs.
The Nazi’s are known for their book burning’s, i was afraid back then in 2016 that T…p would not literally burn books but that he would rewrite history in the heads of his followers.
This is the famous dried up lake of good idea’s in Utah. The text at the bottom reads: Erected by the department of the American mind, June 1972.
After four years it is still not clear if every vote should count.
This is what happened in my head when I saw the unraveling of America the last four years, and for most people life seems to just go on.
And this is hopefully the end result. This is a famous picture of Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trial. Goering was a famous Nazi, he enriched himself over the backs of many corpses. It has really heard me that America was on this path the last four years. If you study what the Germans have done to millions of people in the second world war, then you will understand why even the smallest wink to those day’s is very dangerous. I hope that the people that voted for him stop looking at the horizon in the rearview mirror.

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Day 1750, white road marks.

I had periods in my life that depression debilitated my will. The light, life, all of it, felt like it was not there, and at the same time, it was all there and pressing the air out of me. Like a good Marine I obeyed my superior, in this case my shrink, and injected my life with routine like walking the dog everyday for a couple of hours. The same route, the same stick to throw. All this outside, and the world, that had made me sick, was also the thing that healed me at the end.

In life, the things you love, are often also the things that make you sick. An obvious one is off course unhealthy snacks, a cigarette or driving to fast on your motorcycle. You can also think of the relation you have with you parents, friends or your wife or husband. The unhealthy things in the first category are never healthy, they are tolerable when you reduce the intake to a minimum, and if you like driving fast, you should go to a race track twice a year. The second category can also be toxic at the same time that you love them.

With your friends and family you might take a little bit more distance, if you feel that gas is building up in your stomach, but if you are married, and also have kids, it becomes much harder to put distance between you and them. A lot of people will choose the easier road that leads to a divorce, but if you use the same routine that helped me getting over my depression, confronting it all in a structured way, you might find the reason again why you once loved this all.

There is a reason why you loved your life, wife, husband and kids once. The reason is… that you loved them…and there is nothing rational about it. Al the stupid things you do in life, you do because you love it, not because you thought your way into it. And because there is no reason for it, there is no reason to stay with it, or with the person you once loved, if that love is gone. But I once lost my love for life, and life has also no reason, but I found the love for it back again when I walked the dog.

My girlfriend and I, we are no sentimental fools or hopeless romantics. We have our routines that guide us like the white road marks besides the road do. This guidance helps us, specially when it is dark, you can see where the road ends, and the ditch starts, and steer the relationship down the road with more ease. This way I also have more time to look to the side at her, like I did in those first days when the car was still in cruse control.

The poem is from Day 1324, November 2019

I turned

and a dark forest arose

from where I was

before

~

lost

~

though soon

the familiar sound

that brings you down

brings you back

to the light

like a stream

to the sea

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Day 1749, interesting.

Everybody that looks at my pictures knows that I like objects that are often overlooked. Lately I have been taking a lot of pictures of doors, widows and other things connected to a house.

If you look at the picture above this text you will see an old drain. Maybe it’s because I am a carpenter that I see what they did to mount it, and repair it. Like the little screw that secures the pipe to the squire attachment on the next pipe. I not only see these objects, but also the work that someone has put in it, and the thought processes that might have been going on to find solutions for some challenges and mistakes. It’s the same for the windows and doors, they all have stories to tell and hours of work stored in them.

You can also look at the cracks in the paint. Are they there because the paint is old , or is there some movement in the bricks behind the plaster where the paint is once smeared on. Maybe the ground underneath the house is slowly shifting, or…or…well you get the point. These objects have a lot of stories in them, if you are interested and look at them.

The poem I found for today is one that I have written for Day 1318.

Even a fake flower

will one day

be loved

for its purity

Years ago I bought some fake flowers in a thrift shop as a joke for my girlfriend, who doesn’t like fake flowers. It’s also a private joke between us, because we from Holland are known to be cheap, and I was always complaining about the expansive flowers that came all the way from a warmer place to the North of Norway, where they got sold, while already halfway trough their life. After many years these fake flowers slowly grow (haha) on here. I think because there is a specific story attached to it that has inflated the real value.

People are interesting, some more than others. Objects are interesting to, some more than people than others.

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