poem

Day 3670, ten years.

My thoughts, Daily picture

These are the pictures I took 3673 days ago, on March 24, 2016. It was the day I told myself I should take my so-called hobby a bit more seriously, so I challenged myself to take a picture every day and post it online. For the first 604 days, it was just pictures, and I posted on a photo website that I no longer have. I still have all the pictures, but you cannot find them on this blog. I am not sure why I moved to WordPress, but I guess it was about time to not only post a picture a day but also share some of my writing. I have always written, but irregularly, and I guess it was time to take that hobby more seriously, too. I never really posted on social media, mainly because I moved away from them in 2016, and because I have all kinds of opinions and I don’t care too much for interaction with people who have other opinions. That is just a waste of time. I had a few good interactions with people who commented here over the years, who might disagree with me, but they were in the form of long emails, not lunch-sized critiques with a side of word salad.

If you look at the top of this post, you can see that I am on day 3670, not 3673. I don’t know exactly how that happened, but I remember a few times that I realized just in time that I had entered the wrong day numbers for a couple of days and had to go back a few posts to fix it. I guess that happened another 3 times, but by then, I could never recover from that mistake. Imagine changing the title of a thousand posts… But I swear I posted every day, though sometimes it was the day after, after midnight, or when I was in an airplane and had to wait until whatever time it was in the new time zone. I will stick with the 3670 for today because, as I said, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and if I may say so myself, that is something.

Photography is still my hobby, but I don’t take pictures every day like I did at the beginning. I did that for a couple of years, often taking several good pictures in one day. Over time, I started using pictures from other days. So it is still a picture a day, but sometimes I go back to pictures from the last month, and sometimes to ones from 30 years or more, and use one of those old pictures. I still love taking pictures. For the last 1.5 years, I have been going to Fredrikstad’s center on Sunday mornings to take pictures. I did this just to push myself to find inspiration in streets I have walked many times and have seen every building through one of my lenses, but now I am done with it, and I wait for the moment when nature wakes up here, and I can go out with my macro lens again.

It never feels like a burden to write every day. It is so normal now that I see no reason to quit. Even on the busiest days, I always find a few minutes to snap an interesting picture with my phone, write a three-sentence poem-like thing, and post it. I can do that on the toilet if I have to. But seriously, for someone like me who thinks way too much and knows all too well how repetitive daily life is, these five minutes on the toilet, or more normally, 30 minutes to an hour behind my computer looking for a cool picture, editing it, and getting inspired to write something about it, keep me going. Without art, life is not much worth.

I asked the AI overlord to pick 10 random days. I took screenshots of those days and posted them below. 

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Day 3662, I deciphered.

Daily picture, Poetry, Quotes 
In the right circumstances
we can all feel vertigo
when looking up

I deciphered my handwritten notes from a notebook from 2004. It was all in Dutch but I translated it and took some of the rambling out, but maybe not enough. I leave that decision up to you.

What am I worried about?

Structuring society in such a way that every individual coming into the world, man or woman, is given nearly equal opportunities to develop their various abilities and thereby be able to utilize them in their work.

(uit L.J.C. Beaufort, Michael Bakounin, Majesteit, pag. 30)

Why would you worry about your fellow human? In my case, the lack of freedom for others takes away my own freedom. Everyone is increasingly looking alike, as if we no longer have a choice in shaping our own future.

That freedom seems vast because, apparently, no one tells you what to choose or forces you to do this or that. You can select which school to attend, where to work, how to live, and where to go on vacation. Most of the time, people also feel comfortable with those choices: ‘It’s all good, and I feel good.’ The measure of pleasure is whether you feel comfortable. Of course, it’s nice when people feel good; peace of mind is, after all, the ultimate goal of life, I think that is what they say.

But many people don’t feel good and, seemingly, have the same freedoms and opportunities but cannot use them. They can’t because they lack the necessary capacities and resources or, as in my case,  they don’t want to function within a capitalist consumption society. A consumer society involves consumption, and unnecessary products must be made to be sold with the money of the people who produce them. I admit this is a bit of an oversimplification, but essentially, that’s the core idea. Now, this itself isn’t so bad, except that no status quo can exist. Growth must happen, and the industry that promotes this is enormous.

Let’s say someone needs a pair of shoes, free of any influence but with the memory of painful, dull feet. They want shoes that prevent that memory from getting worse. Their new shoes do their job, and when worn out, they buy new ones. I’m not suggesting you should only have one pair of shoes, but how much is enough? Most people find it strange if you have 30 pairs, but many do. They probably serve a great purpose for the consumer society, but at what cost? It’s very hard to think through and measure, but I see 30 pairs of shoes made from material that must be extracted from the ground, processed, and transported, all just for the madness of someone who thinks they need so many shoes to protect their feet.

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Day 3661, Looking back.

Daily picture, Poetry 
You read yourself, from years ago

are you still there 
then
is now still then

have I stood still
does it surprise 
me 
that I once
was as they wanted 
me 
then
but 
but my style 
was there
only idea 
not yet 

the character 
recognized
the sheen of 
depression 
ab
sent
my now-known 
seed
which
as it grew, 
showed me more
was that my salvation,
resembling a punishment. 

2004

Day 3568, Old poem.

Daily picture, Poetry

Dream machine

We dig deep, moving through the darkness
from my thoughts toward the inside
where there is light, to move as if on a mountain
that tilted and gets lighter with great strides
it arrives, that thought which once was
a distant view, but now shines upon
the midnight behind me, where I come from.

Out there, the world now seems far away in this
beautiful landscape where darkness has its place.

Tomorrow we will talk and think and search
and dig into depths, and laugh at words
pulling life out, of context, as if it is something
and wants to be where the I has no idea and I want
to know it all that is and may be, of
expectation and hope, to guide myself,
a dream machine.

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Day 3657, empty space.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Poetry 
Empty space

I still have the feeling
of a large empty space
in my head
when I concentrate
on the purpose of life

Could it be a hint,
that empty space,
that nothing?

From a notebook, 2005

That nothing is what I feel too, even when I try to connect with my real personality, deadly afraid to face my past for my sense of self. Who am I amidst all this noise? I have an idea, but I don’t dare reveal it yet, very afraid to let go of my familiar personality. I allow myself to be seen only occasionally, by confidants, fellow philosophers, so to speak, because I dare to call myself that, just not to everyone. So I don’t yet dare to claim that identity. When people ask what I do, I say I’m a carpenter. It comes out hesitantly, but for convenience, I say I’m a carpenter. Actually, I’m a philosopher, which is just a word. I’ve never had illusions or dreams, and if you examine them, then you’re what they call a philosopher. I once had illusions, but for the last four or five years, I’ve been almost certain that I no longer have illusions, or maybe this is an illusion; I don’t expect any great insights anymore that make me believe there’s a purpose beyond our time here on this rock with a layer of mold on it. No more illusions, only… dreams.