Have you ever stood still while having the thought that there are eight billion people on this earth with eight billion ways of looking at the same world as you do and live in?
Eight billion ways to process all of this information and at least eight billion ways of believing what is processed.
Eight billion people that, by design, have to experience themselves as the center of their world.
Eight billion people conversating with themselves and finding words to decipher their beliefs.
Eight billion people who believe that they are alone in the world but still cling to the hope that there is another that will understand...them.
Eight billion people that close their eyes every night, helpless like we all are in our sleep.
Eight billion people who are only equal in their silence.
6 Loss of dignity. – Reflection has lost all its dignity of form: we have made a laughing-stock of the ceremony and solemn gestures of reflection, and couldn’t stand an old-style wise man. We think too fast, while on our way somewhere, while walking or in the midst of all sorts of business, even when thinking of the most serious things; we need little preparation, not even much silence: it is as if we carried around in our heads an unstoppable machine that keeps working even under the most unfavourable circumstances. Formerly, one could tell just by looking at a person that he wanted to think – it was probably a rare occurrence – . that he now wanted to become wiser and was preparing himself for a thought: one would set one’s face as for prayer and stop walking: yes. one stood still for hours on the street once the thought ‘arrived’ – on one or two legs. The dignity of the matter required it!
This is a picture of a door with someone’s art painted on it. I don’t like showing of pictures of something that in itself is beautiful or interesting. The problem is that most things you take pictures of are interesting in themselves. A colorful sunset is beautiful, and a picture can show that, but as a photographer, you have to manipulate that reality to make the sunset yours. There is a thin line between just a picture of a sunset or landscape or a picture of these scenes that is in itself worth watching.
The art on the door and fence is interesting in itself if you go to the place where it is, you can enjoy it too, but there is a lot of distraction around it, and it might be cold or too warm and the light harsh. This picture shows what the original artist probably intended, and that is the illusion and movement. Though I manipulated this photo just like I do with a picture of a sunset, I find it still strange to take credit for it, and that is strange because a sunset is mothers nature’s work, but in a sense, so is the art we make as humans, as individuals too.
I sometimes make pictures that can be considered as art, but I have never put any effort into learning these skills. I take a lot of pictures, but that’s what I like to do and what I know of composition and style is something I just had without any effort. I had the luck that I got a camera from my parents when I was young so I could discover these qualities in me, I would have never known without the right people around me at the right time. I also find enough motivation and inspiration to keep on taking pictures, but again, there is no effort in that because it’s what I have always done when my mind is set on something, it’s “baked” in me.
I just want to say that we can praise the artist for what comes out of their mind or hands, but I think we should praise even more the coincidence that so much talent has come together in one place and gave birth to that art. I think some humility is good for all of us, and we shouldn’t inflate what “we” bring to the table ourselves. Some say that we are just conscious, I don’t know about that, but we are at least conscious of ourselves and our talents, and we should also know that we are not the cause of our talents, at most caretakers.
I still remember when I bought this Coolio cd. It was 1994, and I lived in Curacao, one of the former Dutch Caribbean Islands. I didn’t listen much to radio back then, but I often went to one of the few record stores and just browsed through de cd’s and picked the ones that spoke to me to listen to in the store, that way, I had a nice couple of hours of listening to unknown music and with some luck some new music to take home for keeps.
I never had a specific taste for rap music, but I started listening to Ice-T and Ice Cube around that same time because of the seriousness of their lyrics and what they tried to tell. They sometimes fooled around also, but this Coolio cd was for sure more lighthearted. I still listen to it every now and then, that’s why I keep my cd player around and all the CDs I ever bought, I am a sentimental guy, and these old CDs bring me back to those day’s like little time machines in a box.
I have not followed his career or life, but I hope he had a good life and a peaceful way of leaving us all…
The number you can listen to and read the lyrics from is his most famous song “Gangsta’s paradise, it has some good lyrics, and as a part-time philosopher, I can pick and appreciate some lines that are, for me, timeless in the describing the world we still live in.
Living in a small big country far from the centre makes it sometimes necessary to travel long distances to get what you need. We’re on the way back, but still 3 hours from our workplace, we have already traveled 14 hours. We picked up a large, used table saw to replace a 40 year old saw we had. My old colleague, who worked longer at the company than the old table saw is old finally retired at 72. So we young ones immediately took the chance to look for replacements of the old machines. The old machines need a lot of love and special encouragement to let them work correctly, something the old guy excepted out of his love for the machines. He didn’t understand why we complained that the old girl didn’t saw straight anymore, she just needs a little guidance and help was his response. I don’t know if I ever fall in love with this new saw, but the time it took getting her home has already helped with getting her closer to my heart, if only because I enjoyed a whole day of driving through this beautiful landscape.
When I was young, we had a poster on the wall, or maybe I saw it somewhere else, anyway, the poster didn’t depict much it just had the words: “what if no one went to the war” on it. It was something like that, but that thought never left me and is still thought-provoking.
What if Putin or some American president declares war and all the soldiers stay home, including the law enforcers. It will not work, of course, but it reminds me of the communist and their call to the world’s proletariat to unite. The people with power and the systems they serve can only function if a large part of “powerless” people follow their orders, like sending them to war or suppressing in their name the people that are unwilling.
I know from my own experience that standing up, literally, in a meeting at work can feel good, but when you tell what has to change and you look around to your colleagues for a sign of support, that is not coming. In private, most of your colleagues complained about how work is organized, but they don’t dare to speak up when confronted with authority. For most, it is just too much hassle, and they don’t want to be seen as a troublemaker, others are just too cowardly.
I remember a lieutenant in the Marines, he was a little too sure of himself and proud of his rank. I don’t think it is bad to be proud of something you achieved, but you have to make sure you earned it or at least, are worth it. He often got us “killed” in exercises, and you understand that bugged me, what if it was real… I let him know what I thought of him, not the lieutenant but the guy who was only 2 years older than me and was obviously in it way over his head. Well, that was detention for me and probably some bad remarks in my dossier. The Sargeant that told me this told me also in private that he agreed with me but that you couldn’t say these things against a superior. And I always thought the point was to stay alive and weed out the weakest link.
You might think: “why did he go into the military when he first wrote about not going to war.” There was still a draft in the Netherlands in the early nineteen nineties, and because I quit school, I got called in. My mother wasn’t happy, the pacifist she is, but she also taught me to think for myself and not take her lessons for granted. So I went to the Marines because that would mean adventure and not just 12 months of boredom or playing the role of a conscientious objector with an inherited opinion, it would be unhealthy to have an opinion and stick to it when your 18. It was an adventure, and I learned a lot during those three years. One of the lessons is that not going to war is an option, but once you are confronted with an “enemy” in person, you will defend yourself and the people you are with.
I feel for the soldiers on both sides in the war that is going on In Ukraine, the world of a soldier gets really small, and it is hard to imagine if you have never been there. It is just mindboggling that one man can decide to put half the world in crisis and send thousands of people to their deaths. And Putin might be seen as an autocratic madman but don’t forget that the so-called American democracy did the same thing when it invaded the sovereign state of Iraq, killing an estimated 150 000 civilians.
That we still live in a world where a small group of people can lure us all in the wrong direction tells me that we all still don’t know what the hell we are supposed to do on this earth. We still follow the biggest monkey because we have no better idea.
The door is still closed
to keep the fresh air in
Nochrisis
Simone de Beauvoir
The second sex
When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.
There is a big red alarm bell
hanging outside my house
In an emergency I can sound it
but I have no neighbors
and live alone
at least I can hear it
myself
and turn it on
myself
when I need it
myself
Have you ever stared at an empty wall
and wondered
standing still while walking in the city
why it is there
the function of the wall is clear
but still
why is it there
IV. Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, ‘Ah, that is he.’ For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause.
Nochrisis 