Traveling and Writing

Traveling and Writing

This website is about traveling and writing. Being on the move and being emotionally moved. Two different but interconnected things. Traveling is sometimes a way of muddling through, writing is even more difficult. Traveling and writing - the art of breathing and reflecting. I write about temples, pyramids, cities and ruins, forests and mountains, valleys and rivers, volcanoes and lakes. I tell about small happenings of daily life.

In the year 2000, I wrote a booklet about my travels in South East Asia, entitled 'Met de Hoed tegen het Licht.' In 2005, I traveled in Central America and wrote 'My Ruta Maya,' published on my website. Recently I traveled to West-Papua (Indonesia) and wrote a booklet ' Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei.' I developed a style of writing half way between prose and poetry. Moreover, I write haiku on the road. On this website, haiku and pictures are combined. In a way, the pictures block the haiku in order to create a kind of silence in between. These haiku intend to be power stations of words and images. They are a sublimation and a denial of reality.

Traveling is a way of being and thinking. At times, the traveler is a nomad who leaves his home and makes the world his home. His ideas become flexible and volatile. On the move, he experiences life as a stream of consciousness changing by the ever alternating and moving impressions of his new environment. The traveler doesn't compare, but tries to be receptive and open. He needs to be 'innocent' and to listen in order to hear and see the world. Traveling is an art of the mind and an effort of the body.

The Art of Traveling

Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish poet of the 20th century writes in his Book of Luminous Things ‘since poetry is an expression of wondering at things, landscapes, people, their habits and mores, poetry and travel are allied.’

Better, I couldn’t have said it.

I frequently traveled in Western and Central Europe, through the immense and colorful landscapes of the Midwest of the USA, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, but I haven’t been – just to mention it - in Africa south of the Sahara. Read the book of Kapuscinki ‘The shadow of the Sun’ and you are in Africa. Read ‘The Rings of Saturn’ from W.G. Sebald and it is as if you stroll in the near emptiness of a landscape of dunes in Suffolk ( East England), while the author opens the archives of the world for you. Or read ‘Weerwerk’ (Counter Acting) from Bert Schierbeek and the intimate landscape of corn and grasses of eastern Groningen (the Netherlands) revives.

All these mentioned authors are able to 'germinate' with the landscape as the great French painter Paul Cézanne called it. They open their mind and heart to the world and the landscape. They possess the technique and the art of relating the mind to the landscape. Then, they hear and see how the landscape opens itself and offers its gifts to the observer. This art requires a passiveness of the mind and a spontaneous way of connection to the environment. It is a matter of patience and practice.

Whether it is the reflecting ricefields of Java and Bali, the forests of Sulawesi, the shining golden Buddha temples in Thailand, the pyramids and ruins along the Ruta Maya in Yucatan, Guatemala or Honduras, the corall rifs of Bunaken ( Indonesia) or Caye Caulker (Belize), the American rain forests on the coast of the Pacific Ocean or the impenetrable mondi and its decaying mansions in the hills of Curacao ( the Caribbean) – those are all places and moments par excellence of intense sensation and experience.

Traveling is often the art of observing, reflecting and meditating. Writing is the finishing touch. That is what you will find here.

The Author

Derk Cools is born in 1939 in Den Haag / The Hague, the  Netherlands. After high school, he enters the university of Utrecht and gets his degree of human geography and economics.  In 1965, he joins the Army and finally  serves as lieutenant. As a civil servant with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, he becomes an expert in regional economic planning, technology development and international economic and industrial cooperation. He publishes several papers on integrated planning for the OECD.  After the fall of the Berlin wall, he helps to develop and apply  programs for industrial restructuring in previous East European countries as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Rumania.  In 1994, he retires and moves to the Netherlands Antilles, the island of Curacao in the Caribbean..


Since 1995, he frequently travels to the Midwest of America, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and further to Montana, Wyoming, California (in 1994- 1999), to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand (in 1999 and 2005) and to Central America, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize (in 2004) and Nicaragua and Costa Rica (in 2005).




In 2002, his  book   'Met de Hoed tegen het Licht' (reizen door Zuid-oost Azië) is published. In a way, it's a travel book, but also a meditation of life. The haiku poet Bashõ is his comrade on the road.
In 2009, he returns to South east Asia and particularly Laos and its former capital Luang Prabang. He travels also to Indonesia, Bali and West Papua. At the end of 2009, a new booklet is edited, entitled Seven days in the Baliemvalley, West Papua ( in dutch: Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei. And again, it is a spiritual journey and an experiment in mental geography.  In 2011, he writes and publishes a more or less historical documentary book about his aunt, 'Een dochter van Epicurus', you can order through www .amazon.de in Europe or outside the EU via lulu.com  It contains a sketch of the post-War years in the Netherlands, the setting of the life of his aunt, a social democrat and Epicurist in practice.


Apart from writing, he loves literature, hiking ,swimming and jeu de boules. His recent  favourites are books of the German author W.G. Sebald, the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, the French novelist le Clézio, the modern Dutch poet Nachoem Wijnberg and the Portugese author Antonio Lobo Antunes.


At times he writes haikus. A kind of hubris.