Meanwhile

in Belgium





"Fijne keerstdagen allemaal!/ Merry Christmas everyone!"

What Can Be Found

is a kind of meaningful silliness that in itself is not random but at the core of what it is.





Especially listen to the reactions of the listeners.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a wonderful 2017

For

because it's always in the direction of the other...because it's worth living for

The Present Moment

Surrender

What if for once the strong would agree to carry the weak?!

Media

Marshall MacLuhan: The Medium is the message or rather

Umberto Eco: The message is what the receiver makes of it....

So

the roof is on fire, but yet there migt be several meanings: During de warmste week/ the warmest week a "fire" burns on top of the VRT, a Flemish broadcasting company, tower as a reminder of all the charitable causes they will focus on during the next week. More than a thousand causes!

Something to Cling to

Feel the drama, for it seems like revolution needs a strong narrative.

Calling

Who for his greed? Who for his hunger?... And who by brave ascent? Who by accident?

Humane

It's somewhere lurking deep inside, this thought or idea that to grant dignity would deliver hope, yet again, for a worldwide political body that is more torn apart than ever.

Everytime

I play this on the stereo my husband likes to sing along "Dingelingeling"

Vulnerability

or when the private goes public

like Louise Bourgeois story of the male nude model who quite obviously was aroused

By Approximation

Freedom

Feeling silly is most probably the best indication of liberty because in fact one doesn't have a thing in the world to worry about.

Across the table two were having a lot of fun during our final mass in Rome. So I wondered why and they indicated somebody in their line of vision. So when I took a look I saw what they meant. This person was sitting in his chair like he had fallen asleep, like the image of the fat monk at ease with himself and the world, and one could imagine that at any moment he would start snoring. I had to surpress laughing out loud and probably falling off my chair so hard that my son, who was sitting next to me, started to ease me because he thought I was shaking with sadness.

Humility

A sense of the enevitability of having to yield to the utter embarrassment of being made fun of.

Just like when my at the time five-year-old daughter asked me to ask for a blue fireworks party pick when we were on holiday on Ibiza and I do not speak Spanish. Yet I tried my very best. The result was that my daughter got the desired object and I got a laugh and someone pointing at the picks each time I passed the hotelbar where I had uttered my request.

"Sunrise at the edge of my glass casting its hellish light over the enevitable."

Our Daily Reminders

Who lost and who won?!

The Surrender Of Breda

The Happy Struggle

In this odd mating game we have to wrestle each other until harmony is achieved.

Concordia

with one heart

in varietate concordia

And as somebody called me dreamer nothing but a dreamer because of it I gladly embrace it, though this is my favourite song by Supertramp.

There's No Better Way

there's no other way to express this sensation or/and truth

Look

Detail

Complex Combination

on the spur of the moment it almost feels impossible

Semiological Guerrilla

For Your Kind Consideration

Whatever

does correspond in your breast so much that you would kneel to it...Maybe devoutly...

Continual Inspiration

All this love spreading from some dark times...

Sight

Alle beelden van de schoonheid zitten boordevol wanhoop. / All pictures of beauty are brimful of despair. - Tussen tuin en wereld/ Between garden and world, Paul de Wispelaere

The Benefit of Convention

A Table is a Table from Remo Rauscher on Vimeo.

Mayflies In a Fortress

A hive of mayflies came down upon a fortress and settled on the bastions, took the main tower by a surprise coup, occupied the battlements and the towers. The delicately veined, transparent wings buzzed between the stone walls. "In vain you are trying to stretch your filligrane limbs", the fortress said, "Only who is made to last can claim to be. I'm lasting therefore I am, you're not." - "We live in the air space, we chant time with the vibration of our wings. Whatelse is the meaning of being?", the delicate creatures responded. "You are rather only a shape, placed to mark the boundaries of space and time, in which we are." - "Time passes me, I remain.", the fortress insisted. "You are just the surface of becoming, like the surface of the water of a stream." Whereupon the flies: "We flit through the void like writing across a white paper, like the sound of a flute in the silence. Without us only the all-powerful and all-present void would remain, which is so heavy that it crushes the world, the void, whose detructive power covers itself with fortresses, a massive void, that can only be resolved by the slight and the quick and the delicate." - Italo Calvino

Correlation

self-aware and awkward

A Shocking Lack Thereof

Somebody displaying a shocking lack of understanding anybody besides herself.



Self-absorbed

Wie kann das - Hoe kan dat

"Wie kann das?" literally translated: How can this - an expression peculiar to my home region and in other parts of Germany this phrase would seem peculiar and awkward. It appears to derive from the Dutch/Flemish "Hoe kan dat?", which means the same.

Imagination is something that can overcome so many obstacles, especially physical ones. Like this colourblind former student of art history who wrote about Yves Klein's IKB painting.



Or certainly another example



So baby...

Teach Your Children

Of course it's hard to take that a rich relative simply could by the sheer power of money claim a status oneself has been struggling hard to achieve.
In this case getting the level of skill to join the skiing instructor one loves because he only takes the best. Then your cousin comes along saying, "Well, if he is the such a good instructor, my father will pay him for private instructions." (because we are rich and can afford this). Yet, my dear son, you've got the skill and the fun, something your cousin does not realise - ever...

Generosity

"liberation" or the absurdity of it all

The Archeology of Values

Generosity

In a happy struggle is it necessary to utterly destroy your opponent?

Sometimes it's fun though.



Yet some theories may prove wrong and this to your disadvantage.

The Sublime is Now

Jacques Derrida's example for a sublime work of art: The Song of Songs, cf Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting

So Close But Worlds Apart

A sad story of flight, terror and fear


Wim Opbrouck was traveling on the TGV from Straßbourg to Paris vice versa there sat an Arabic looking man. When asked to show to show his passport this man couldn't produce anything just a piece of paper. The heavily armed policeman told him that he had to leave the train at the next station. When this man had some trouble putting on his coat everybody in the cabin stopped talking all of a sudden because everybody was afraid that he was a suicide bomber. All the while Wim was thinking he ought to say something to support this man. When they finally managed to leave the cabin everybody was relieved, when suddenly a woman yelled hysterically: "His bag, he has left his bag!" So the fear returned and the man had to return to fetch his bag. And Wim couldn't still find something heartening to say to this miserable man, this sad refugee, when he heard an old woman maybe in her eighties say:"Monsieur, bonne chance, monsieur!" as the man was leaving.



A spot by Belgian transportation company De Lijn

Conspiracy

The biggest secrets are those that are for all to be seen.

The empty secret is the best kept.

mysterious

When your mind plays tricks on you because it is out to see patterns in everything.

Translate it into Flemish and the pattern becomes a monster.

A Glimpse

from one practitioner to another

questions I guess only somebody with similar experiences would ask

true communion
 

Concrete

grasp it

"The Single Biggest Problem

...in communication is the illusion that is has taken place." attributed to Bernard Shaw

The single biggest problem with this quote is that it is complete rubbish. How do you hallucinate on either side that communication has taken place? And the second biggest problem is that it isn't by Bernard Shaw at all. So good for him.

Maybe something else is actually meant but expressed a little bit awkward. And this happens a lot!




So frankly, let's talk about it! For mostly there is no other way.

Just Don't

...be afraid of it.

Affection

There is a crisis, fight the horror vacui.

Affection - Infection

Esperance

en dieu


Hotspur

Esperance

The Great Minimum

It is something to have wept as we have wept, 

It is something to have done as we have done, 

It is something to have watched when all men slept,

And seen the stars which never see the sun. 

 

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose, 

Although it break and leave the thorny rods, 

It is something to have hungered once as those 

Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.  

To have seen you and your unforgotten face, 

Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray, 

Pure as white lilies in a watery space, 

It were something, though you went from me today.

 

To have known the things that from the weak are furled, 

Perilous ancient passions, strange and high; 

It is something to be wiser than the world, 

It is something to be older than the sky. 

 

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts, 

And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire 

In a world of flying loves and fading lusts, 

It is something to be sure of a desire.

 

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;

Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.


G K Chesterton

Life is a great gift, maybe just because it isn't everlasting.

But A Dream Within A Dream

Walten

reigning in a slow, yet decisive and powerful manner

patience is a force

"We weren't Lovers Like That

...and besides it would still be alright."

Maybe my favourite Cohen song and its origin:

Redemption - Live And Deal With Others Better

Iachimo:
I am down again.
But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee,
As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you,
Which I so often owe: but your ring first;
And here the bracelet of the truest princess
That ever swore her faith.

Posthumus Leonatus:
Kneel not to me.
The power that I have on you, is to spare you;
The malice towards you to forgive you: live
And deal with others better.

Shakespeare, Cymbline, Act V Scene 5

To reach this serenity Posthumus himself had to go a long and painful way - and somehow he deserved it because his crime was the worst of all.

Surprise!

Inspection

Surprise

Years ago I listened to this one and what stayed in mind was Brook's insistance of the creative process and how powerful it is to take action.

Listening again the central message becomes more overwhelming - the "element of surprise" - and thinking about it, it is so true.

C'est la Différance

There is a difference between fact(s) and truth, and it goes like this: One day truth will hit you.

Il Faut Bien Manger

I'm baking brownies today.


The first time I ever ate brownies was in a classroom at Warren Travis White High School, Farmers Branch, Dallas, Texas. Most of the class was African American and the teacher was Hispanic. We had a wonderful time and boy, could those people rap!

Wisdom

BTW a lovely man to meet, any talk or public appearance is highly recommended!

Communion

In a lot of ways two people echoing each other, Jon Stewart and Tom Lanoye. Maybe because the troubles that their respective countries are facing are quite similar. Maybe the point is to go on, go this one step further - in the legacy of love!





PS: The three gifts of the Holy Spirit are knowledge, understanding and wisdom. The first point is certainly present in a lot of ways today, knowledge reigns supreme, but understanding is already something that baffles and wisdom we can but hope for.

Concept

A Flemish/ Dutch word for 'pattern' is 'monster', nevertheless it also means 'monster'.

So I've been asked for a 'monster' several times.

Canonization

Art could have an impact, it could be provocative, demanding and beautiful. Something to fight about.

In some way the best way to undermine this power is to canonize art. No more argument, no more mental struggle, just dull acceptance.

Monkey Business

"Are monkeys similar to humans because they are so smart; or are monkeys similar to humans because in some ways they are so dumb?"

Paradox

Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers; let thy effects
So follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,
As good as promise. - Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene IV

A lot of people do not have any work at all while others are working themselves to death.

Shopping vs Drinking

If you are remaining sober and watch others devote themselves to their obsession I'd rather watch people getting drunk than them indulging in shopping for its own sake.

Decennia ago when I and my friends were not yet legally allowed to drink alcohol, some parents nevertheless provided some beer at a party. Since I was not interested I stayed sober and watched the others get pissed. The first thing I noticed were the intervals between my friends asking me to accompany them to the toilet upstairs were getting shorter. And the other hilarious effect the alcohol was having was that some people got pretty emotional. Especially two of them, a boy and his girlfriend, they were having the blues (German: heulendes Elend/ crying misery), constantly crying and confessing their love to each other.

So S.O.B.!

Depression

As a Rhenish person I surely have no inclination towards depression. Our motto is "Nothing is so bad that it may not be good for something". Yet I remember one instance I caught a definite glimpse of that feeling. A friend of mine made me go into a retail store on its opening day or rather she asked me to accompany her. We had an appointment but there was still some time left. So we went inside.

The place was overcrowded with people, the walls were decorated with mirrors giving the impression that there was an infinte number of goods and then my friend started buying as well. It felt like all the world, at least the part of it visible to me at that moment, was going insane, binge-shopping like there was no tomorrow. Ad nauseam. I felt the urge to scream and run.