wikileaks

Democracy:: top down or bottom.up? Did you forget suddenly your lesson? Technology is a competitive edge, isn't it? All of a sudden, you forgot who classified which papers? Oh, boy, memory!!! And sorry, I forgot the Canadian official who publicly threatened to assault/murder Assange. Who is who in this world?

Bankers

Old Irish Song

In search 
of eu-ros

you-row
and row
your bank

gently down
the stream

Wikileaks

old pond

the sound of water

diplomats

The World

Poor world, reigned by profit and prophets.

Lightning

We, my wife and I, are standing in the middle of the house.  I count one second between the lightning and the thunder. The walls aren't on a distance of three hundred meters. Next day, the cable of the telephone on the outside of the wall proves to be burnt. The disconnected modems of the TV and the PC are hit too.  I'm a saint? Or my wife?

West-Papua

Nieuws over West-Papoea

Geen tsunami, geen vulkaanuitbarsting, geen aardbeving. Gelukkig maar voor de Papoea's. Nog gelukkiger als ze heel gelaten worden, de Papoea's . Heel, ongeschonden. Mensen zoals wij -

Obama

Obama op reis

Zou hij het durven? Even iets voor de Papua's te zeggen? Zachtjes te fluisteren. Iets, heel kleins? Aan het diner b.v. Tussen twee happen door. Of als zijn stoel wordt aangeschoven. Heel kort, maar. Om de Papua's b.v. voortaan niet te mishandelen? Zou ie het erop wagen? Misschien wil iemand voor hem mijn boek vertalen: Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei.

Mulisch

Mulisch op reis

De grote Nederlandse schrijver is dood. Ging hij ooit op reis? Nee, hij bleef thuis, maar bereisde  met zijn pen de hele wereld. Hij reconstrueerde de wereld  tot fictie en later ook nog de hemel. Zijn ontdekkingsreis is voorbij. Ook de hemel hoeft hij niet  meer te bereizen. Met zijn dood is de hemelpoort voorgoed op slot gedaan. In mijn boekenkast staat geen enkel boek van Mulisch meer. Ik draag ze voorgoed met me mee.

The Mask

Until this day  I never realized what it was or could be. I had never thought about it. Whenever thinking of it, my mind roams to a museum of primitive art in a city. Today, I am in a big city. I stay on the seventh floor of a hotel. It is Singapore, not downtown but close to the heart of the city. The hotel has 12 floors and is brand new. Skyscrapers and buildings under construction surround the hotel.Night and day, traffic is passing by. Who are the people staying in this hotel?

Traffic Jam

This is Eden, the lush garden of drivers, cars and motorcycles. We drive along the north coast of Bali, from Lovina

Rice field

The worker in the rice field

The workers in the rice field are going home after having been planting the seedlings all morning. Two of them remain in the field and are still over there under the blazing sun. I sit on the balcony waiting for the afternoon rain that will come soon. One of the workers moves rather slowly, his legs as round as zero, the form of a circle, but still not a wheel that pushes him forward. It’s an old man; it might even be an old woman. I can hear the two workers talking from far. They make identical gestures of the hands, picking the seedlings, firmly putting them in the thick mud.

A demon in the hotel

I love her at first sight. All of sudden, she is in the open hall of the hotel where breakfeast is served. Outside is a shaded terrace with a seaside view. This is a prime location for a hotel, a restaurant, an early breakfast, for her. She didn’t enter from the terrace. I’m sure of that. She must have entered from the back, where the gardens and the swimming pools are, the high trees, the holy statues of deities, the spouting fountains, the demons between the plants. She had been in the garden. No, I don’t think she is a demon, a fountain or a statue. The body of the grinning demons under the splashing fountain water are green, not hers. She is too quick and elegant, too vivid and vital to be a statue. However, she might be a new demon, her big eyes wide open although behind glasses (most demons don’t wear.) Okay, she is not a local demon, speaking fluently and loudly Spanish but no English. Her hair is blond, meticulously dyed and her eyes are of a dangerous brown color. She cannot smile.

Umbrellas and tropical rain

Umbrellas and tropical rain
Today, I had an unexpected program - inadvertently. After breakfast, I walked along the beach of Kuta you already know. I can tell you, this morning I have seen more dogs together in the sea than ever before. A young guy was throwing a tennis ball upon the water and all the dogs from the beach of Kuta at large ran into the sea, to the same ball, to the same place. The man was practicing his forehand or his backhand depending on the place of the viewer.

A sandwich?

It's a pity, I don't speak Bahassa Indonesia. I'm too old or too lazy to learn it.  However, I do my utmost best to communicate  - in English. Yesterday, some hours after dinner, I was a bit hungry. No problem, I order  a coffee and a snack.' No, Mister, we have no snacks, no sweets, no desert.'  'All right. Maybe you can serve us fried banana.' I'm sorry, sold out.'  But, the bakery is around the corner. 'Sorry, Mister, may not leave here.' Then she suggests to have French fries. I reply that we have had dinner and a snack will do. 'Please, no French fries.'  Finally, I order some bread and cheese. 'Ah, you would like to have a sandwich.'  I think to know how a sandwich looks like. 'Okay,' I give in, 'let's try.' After a while, she brings the coffee. Half an hour later, I ask her for the bread. 'That takes time, Mister,' she says. Returning from the kitchen, at last she brings two big plates with French fries in the middle decorated by four sticks with sliced bread, tomato, cucumber,onion dipped in mayonnaise and hot sauce. A meal for a hungry elephant, a lost lion or a beggar in the street. It might be easier to learn Bahassa Indonesia than to order a sandwich in my hotel.

The beach of Kuta

The beach, the mud and the dogs


It’s the end of a tropical day. The heat is silently hanging over the beach of Kuta. No wind, no change of heat, no movement of the damp, sticky air. The rainy season is over,but

The train to Yogyakarta

The best train

We request our driver to stop at the railway station in order to make a reservation for tickets of a train from Bandung to Yogyakarta. Inside the office of Reservasi, we tell the lady at the desk we would like to have tickets for two windows seats. We want to sit opposite of each other at the same window. Opposite not facing the same direction.The lady gets confused, but the driver succeeds to clear the situation. Everybody is happy and smiles a big smile. Early in the morning of the next day,

Visit to the Tea Factory

Why visit a tea factory?

Always asking why, that 's is an attitude, a reflex of the body, a reaction of the mind, a moment to hold on and to wait. It's an interruption of the stream of consciousness, of the blind process that pushes or drags us somewhere. We don't like to leap in the dark. We are afraid of the dark and the hidden happenings. So, we go to the tea factory not far from Bandung to stop our pondering and watch how it looks like to process tea. The scent of tea reminds us of Proust writing about the madeleine cookies he got from his aunt when he was on holiday.

Bandung without a map

A bookstore in Bandung

I went to  this city, to Bandung without a map. Traveling without a map is like reading a dummy, a book without words. Opening the book, I start to read whatever I want or imagine and love to visualize. My mind and the book are blank. When I like it, I read the invisible words and phrases from left to right, from the bottom to the top, the Chinese or the Japanese way. Even it's possible starting in the middle, half way the page, reading up or down the page.  It's like a poem, my own rhythm and rime. The pages can do without numbers and I might read repeatedly the same white, unnumbered page, the endless stream of thoughts, ideas, words.  Reading in all directions without getting lost, following my own brand new lines, my own paraboles.

Bandung,point zero

Arriving at the airport, there is just one other Westerner. People are polite apart from the woman who pushed me away from the custom officer. Children on the arm of their mom  are watching us as if having never seen whites. Children are naive and innocent, they behave spontaneously and unreserved - they don't push me away. So, I like Bandung. The taxi driver is friendly and smiles continuously. He is happy to have a client, to be on duty, to show he is real, to demonstrate the art of driving. It's crowded in the streets - as crowded as crows would collect other crows in a tree at dusk. And the smell of this crowded city is everywhere. Noise and exhaust fumes, stench and noise, dirt and decay, rubbish all over the street.  Seven million people where governor Daendels ( about 1810) put a stick in the ground and said: make sure, a town will be built here. This spot is called point zero.

Walking in Kula Lumpur

Yesterday I  walked from the hotel to the center of Kuala Lumpur - downtown and its many malls. I left the air conditioned lobby and crossed the dangerously busy street and I made it. Behind my back already the storm of cars, scooters and motorbikes on the way to the next traffic light, intensifying the tropical heat of midday by its murderous speed and exhaust fumes. I passed through a quarter of Chinese restaurants, one next to the other, men moving chairs and tables, women cleaning floors, lazy looking laundries with sleeping women, beauty parlors, balconies lining up drying laundry row after row, and in the streets an army of girls offering the old man sweet massage, dirty dreams and more.  I followed the shade of the skytrain flyeover and entered a high building, a  modern, tall,  recently built mall. The escalators crossed the wide inner space of the huge pavilion and launched me as a consumer to all floors. However, I roamed around as a stranger, an insect lost in the woods, not as a shopper. I loved to see the windows, the reflection of the insect and to enter the open shops. I looked around as if I was the only visitor, highly concentrated, fully energized, an official out of office. The girls of the shops  watched me and turned around. I would like to buy everything. That's what they observed. A hopeless insect of another planet. They smiled and looked away. Something was wrong.They knew.

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur

On the way to Bali, we stop at Kuala Lumpur.  Monchique, my Portugese village has become a tiny, little place, almost a point in my memory. It's so far off now and so immeasurable small, compared to this metropolis of skyscrapers, the multitude of people, the intensity of traffic, the variety of malls and shops. The hotel with a small swimming pool is the place of rest behind the high walls that even cannot keep off the noise of the streets. The malls are ponds of glitter, floors of marble, spaces of glass and high density areas of humans and consumer products. This is the garden of Eden, a paradise of seduction, full of Eves and apples, reflected a million times in the windows of wealth. Moving up and down the stairs or in the elevators of glass, I'm floating on the surf of a whispering wealth and happiness in this consumer paradise. Outside the malls, at times I see a beggar or smell the stench of the hampering sewerage system. No paradise without poverty. Fate and fortune, two sides of the medal.

Monchique,the convent and the clock

The convent and the clock

Uphill from the village, there is a convent, an old cloister, built on a slope covered with pine and eucalyptus trees. Still in the village, signs on the wall of houses show the way how to reach it. Before leaving the village, on the left hand you will see a small statue of a Holy Mary. She guards the hikers, the would-be pilgrims. When was it built, the convent? Maybe five hundred years maybe a thousand years ago. I don’t know. It is a ruin now, overgrown by plants and ivy, walls partly fallen down. When you arrive at the convent, a man will call you and show you the backside of the ruin, his little garden and the sign of private property. He is the ghost of history. Why is the convent a ruin? The people don’t have money for a restoration of the historical building? Sure, it will cost a lot of money. They prefer to spend it on the maintenance of the little church in the village? That’s where they go every Sunday, not to the convent. They would have to climb even higher; and at Sunday, they wear their Sunday dress and shouldn’t sweat as much as during the days of the week. Moreover, the priest of the church might be too old and unable to climb all the way up to the convent. For sure he is old, if he is the man who tolls the bells of the church. It is done by hand. I can hear it and count the strokes. At times the bells run fast at times they are slow. Sometimes, it seems as if the man forgets what he is doing. The tolling stops and resumes. Counting the strokes makes no sense. So, the hours pass, the months, the years. That’s how gradually a ruin comes into being. I just hear the chimes of the past, the call of the local ghost.

Monchique or an outsider in the village

I am an outsider in the village, not a dog. Sitting on wooden chairs, people talk to each other and don’t look at a person who takes pictures. They are too busy, doing what they always do. Not a look or a nod, no gesture, no sign of communication. They talk about the weather, someone in the family who died, about the quality of the oranges and the price of gaz. A picture won’t change their business, their talks or their feelings. They don’t need a picture or an outsider to feel at ease. Do they need a dog to be insider? And what is it, they have or hide within their own circle, their group, their family? Maybe, it’s the dog, they don’t like. Or is a dog merely an alibi to show they are insiders? Sometimes a dog behaves like an outsider, but always remains closeby as if it belongs to the inner circle. It is not a real outsider? Calling the dog means they cannot miss a dog? It’s possible. There are many dogs in the village. Little ones, weird ones, quiet dogs and barking dogs, all over the place. They have dogs even in their small garden or on the balcony. I think they love dogs. At times, it is better to call a dog. An outsider might disturb their life.

When I talk of the mountains around Monchique

When I talk about the mountains, I talk about the air, its perfumes, its lightness and I talk of a way of breathing faster than in the valley. I get a feeling of being uplifted as if I float on invisible wide wings. I’m like a bird, no I feel like a bird singing early in the morning, when the fog is lifting and revealing the slopes and the valley. The air is moving upward and the birds start to free the forest, to open the woods, to awaken the flowers and to reach for the sky where they seek their soul in the upper blue. It is the hour that life arises from the valley floor and moves upward to the limitless sky opening the earth to the universe. The singing and the moving unite into a kind of jubilation that conquers the mountains, the meadows, the sheep on the slope and my soul setting free its emotions and feelings. I hear the running of water, the calling of the cuckoo, the falling of a pine apple and the beat of my heart growing into one big bang of new life breaching out of its skin, its shell, its banks.

Monchique, a little village in the Algarve

Monchique, a little village in Portugal

For the time being, I am in Monchique, a little village in the southwestern part of the Algarve, the most southern region of Portugal. It is april and the temperature during the day about 20 centrigrades and 10 at night. It’s never cold, they say and mean frost is unknown. Every night I try the wood burner – in vain. There is too much moist in the air and the wood is too wet. In the hills, the weather is often more cloudy than in the valley, but the temperature is also a bit more moderate. The village has about 6.500 inhabitants, shopkeepers, café owners, farmers, builders and street cleaners. It is built on the slope of a hill about 700 m high. Road traffic centers on a square that connects an upper and lower part of the village. A well maintained park covers the lower slope, most of the houses are built on the upper side. Tourists almost never climb down, but al ways walk uphill through the narrow streets of cobble stones. Or they stay in the restaurants along the square and its water works, a fountain and its water lifting mill in miniature. I didn’t count the tourists nor the pubs, pastelaria’s, restaurants or cafés. They are many and I will visit them in the weeks ahead. It will be quite a job. Hopefully, it will help me to get used to the montagnards of this village. They are small, broad shouldered people in old fashioned woolen clothing. Most of the men wear a small hat. The older people carry a walking stick, because of arthritis or other illness of old age. However, they still stroll up and down hill. They have a steady pace and patience knowing life will be shortened when hurrying. The people here live already for centuries the same kind of life, their lifestyle never changed. Do they live in this age?

Yes, they do live in this age, this beginning of the 21 th century, because they like to forget the past but not the tradition. They are traditional; they dress traditionally and think traditionally. They are never in a hurry, but keep an eye on the ball even if there is no ball. Climbing, they know where they go and will arrive. Time is included in their behavior, wrapped in their fashion, fixed in their mind. Time is out of order and present all around. The people’s movements are slow, but steady and simultaneously senseless while without aim. Sometimes the people stop and look around as if for a moment they lost their goal or to show they still are on their way. At times, they interrupt their climb to talk to friends or neighbors or even strangers and smile, because they can’t communicate although they feign doing so. They talk about the weather, the start of the spring, the pain they feel in their old legs. And so they give rest to their body taking a breath for the next stretch of the street. Standing on three legs they look solid and well balanced, firm and decisive. As soon as they start walking again, I see their fragility and frailty, the efforts to find a steady pace, the old age they try to hide. Though they cannot mask who they are, they all look alike because of their traditional dress. I don’t know them personally and therefore they are to me a kind of people, a sort of beings, a category of persons acting as actors in an outdoors theater, personae wearing a mask. Monchique is a mountain, its inhabitants are montagnards. I start to find my way in the mountains, later I will try to understand the people.

La Ruta Maya (Centraal-Amerika) en de Baliemvallei (West -Papua) een gedicht als ruïne

In het jaar 2004 reisde ik langs de Ruta Maya. Ik schreef een kort essay over deze  Indiaanse cultuur als ruïne en een langer gedicht over de dode steden en de hedendaagse Indiaanse dorpen en stadjes in het regenwoud van Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras en Belize. Het essay is geschreven in het Engels, het gedicht in het Nederlands. Ze horen  niettemin bij elkaar en zijn door mij enigszins  bewerkt.

 Onlangs schreef ik over de reis in de Baliemvallei op West-Papua een boekje Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei, te bestellen bij lulu.nl  Het vormt een sensitieve geografie in de vorm van een dertigtal overpeinzingen.

De onderliggende verbindende ervaring is de melancholie. In de Baliemvallei om wat aan cultuur  - van de Papua's -  dreigt te vergaan en in Yucatan om wat  als Maya beschaving is  ten onder gegaan. Verleden en toekomst gaan een verbinding aan in het heden. De tijd maakt de mens tot de grote verliezer.

Ruta Maya, tempels en steden

 
 
                                Mijn Ruta May 

                                  een gedicht


Het gedicht volgt de reis door het Rijk der Maya’s in Midden-Amerika in het voorjaar van 2004 langs oude  Maya-steden Chichén  Itzá  en   Palénque,  Uxmál  en  Toniná,  Copán, Quiriguá, Tikál en Tulúm.

Het gedicht toont in zijn  regelbreuken, grammaticale verschuivingen en zijn hortend en stotend ritme, wat de tijd aanrichtte in de steden, tempels en pyramides, die tot ruïnes werden in het regenwoud. (zie hiervoor ook mijn Ruta Maya in het engels.)
     

My Haiku

Haiku.
Roland Barthes, a French author  and expert of Japanese literature in the twentieth century, wrote that we  are not able to really understand the Japanese verse called haiku. During my journey to South East Asia, I composed  travel haiku and published the poems in the booklet entitled With a Hat shading the Light - an allude to the Indonesian Wajang Play.

In the Dutch text, I stick to the basic haiku rule of three lines and the rhythm of 5-7-5 syllables. I abandoned this rule in  the English translation and focused on the number of sound units.  In the original Japanese haiku, Nature had always its place. This is not the case in the verses I wrote.  Here, I publish the poems out of their original context. I think this is acceptable, while the Japanese haiku traditionally  had been detached from a longer poem and had been set aside as a little stand alone verse.

Read on

Darwin, aardbeving en tsunami in Chili

Darwin, Aardbevingen en Tsunami

In hoofdstuk 16 van De Reis van de Beagle geeft  Darwin een nauwkeurige beschrijving van de aardbeving en tsunami in februari van het jaar 1835 bij Concepcion, in Chili. Het is wonderlijk hoe dicht hij de theorie  benadert van de verschuivende schollen en de platentectoniek , die pas in de twintigste eeuw is ontwikkeld. Hij trekt echter een andere conclusie namelijk 'dat zich hier - bij Concepcion - een enorme lavameer met een oppervlak van bijna tweemaal de Zwarte Zee uitstrekt onder een heel dunne laag vaste aarde.' Hij ziet ook een samenhang tussen aardbevingen en de actieve werking van vulkanen in de nabijheid. In hoeverre daarin  vandaag de dag enig geloof kan worden gehecht , weet ik niet.


Het hoofdstuk lijkt bijna een verslag van de recente aardbeving, versterkt door het beeld dat hij oproept wat de uitwerking van een dergelijke aardbeving op een modern land als Engeland zou hebben - een soort vooruitblik, bijna een profesie.

De kaart van West-Papua

De kaart van West-Papua

Het Wereld Natuurfonds is bezig de flora en fauna van West-Papua in kaart te brengen. Straks weten we meer van de natuur op het eiland, maar de Papua's weten altijd nog veel meer van hun natuurlijke omgeving. Ze wonen er al duizenden jaren en kennen hun land beter dan wie ook. Ze moesten wel, anders zouden ze gewoon niet meer leven. Hun kennis is dan ook van levensbelang ook al hebben ze die niet in kaart gebracht.

In mijn boek 'Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei' is een kaartje van het land opgenomen. Het is een foto van een kaart, die een gids voor ons op tafel in het hotel uitspreidde. De namen van dorpen en stadjes, van rivieren en valleien zijn met de hand - zijn hand ? - ingeschreven. Ook meren, volkjes en traditionele hutten zijn aangegeven. Het is een persoonlijke kaart geworden, waarvoor ik de gids nog steeds dankbaar ben. Hij weet als de beste hoe groot het land is, hoe ver lopen het is van het ene dorp naar het andere - wat ik alleen weet door naar de schaal te kijken die ontbreekt.

Alleen hier om al heb ik achterin het boekje een paar basisgegevens over West-Papua opgenomen. Mijn gids zal er om moeten lachen als hij het hoort.




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Het Wereldnatuurfonds en West-Papua

Het Wereld Natuur Fonds en West-Papua

Zoals gezegd, brengt het Wereld Natuurfonds West-Papua in kaart. Het inventariseert flora en fauna en de bestaanswijzen van de bewoners. Het verzekert dat het bestaansrecht van de bewoners niet in het gedrang zal komen. Hoe kan dat? De kaart is een merkwaardig ding. Het is een model, een schematische weergave van wat in kaart wordt gebracht. De kaart laat van alles weg. Het reduceert de werkelijkheid tot een schema, een beeld. Wie de kaart gebruikt, ziet alleen wat in beeld is gebracht. Het overige bestaat niet .Een kaart is buitengewoon handig. Als een rivier op een kaart is ingetekend, kun je de loop van de rivier volgen. Maar je weet niet of de rivier snel stroomt, vol vis zit of krokodillen, in het droge seizoen droog staat enz. De kaart biedt een reductie van de rivier. Natuurlijk kun je ook een viskaart van de rivier maken en een seizoenskaart en deze combineren. Dan nog blijft het een reductie. Een kaart is daarom ook eenvoudig te misbruiken. Wat ontbreekt aan een kaart is het onzichtbare dat er wel degelijk is. De kwaliteit van de dingen en de mensen en hun bestaan. De manier waarop zij leven of er zijn. Hoe ze bestaan en op elkaar inwerken. Uiteraard weet het Wereld Natuurfonds dit wel. We weten ook dat wanneer een gebied ophoudt een witte vlek op de kaart te zijn, het wordt ingelijfd in de moderniteit. In kaart brengen is in de geschiedenis vaak hetzelfde gebleken als om zeep brengen van een cultuur. Dat is een dilemma, ook voor het Wereld Natuurfonds in West-Papua. Wiens bestaansrecht is in het geding?

Wereldnatuurfonds en West-Papua

Het Wereld Natuurfonds en West-Papoea

Het Wereldnatuurfonds is volgens het (eigen) blad Panda al 30 jaar actief in West-Papua en brengt de soortenrijkdom en het landgebruik in kaart. Het bezoekt de dorpen en onderzoekt hoe het land wordt gebruikt en welke waarde dat heeft voor de bewoners. Het zal een plan opstellen zonder dat de natuur of het bestaansrecht van de lokale bevolking in gedrang komen , aldus het blad Panda.

Dit is goed bedoeld, maar wie gelooft dat dit werkelijk mogelijk is? De bestaanswijzen van de Papoea's zijn duizenden jaren oud en geleidelijk ontwikkeld in wisselwerking tussen mens en natuur. Daar is geen plan aan te pas gekomen. De uitdrukking bestaansrecht van de bevolking doet het ergste vermoeden. Wat is het bestaansrecht van een plan, zou je beter kunnen vragen?

Silicon Valley or the Grand Valley in West Papua?

Silicon Valley or Grand Valley?

Who knows the name of the Grand Valley? Who knows where this valley is located, in which part of the world? The American scientist Archbold discovered the valley in 1938. It is called the Baliem valley in West Papua (Indonesia). From his plane, it looked like little Holland, a pattern of tiny fields and dykes, of irrigated crop lands.

Who doesn't know the Silicon Valley? It's the name of the famous IT valley in Northern California. Before the explosive growth of the computer industries, it was a friendly agricultural valley of orchards. Who knows the name of the valley in those days? This Santa Clara Valley was called The Valley of Heart's delight.

In 1932, a Dutch geographer and later professor at the University of Minnesota ,J.O.M. Broek wrote a thesis on the changes of the cultural landscapes of this valley.

I studied human geography at the same university in Holland as prof. Broek. In 2009, I wrote a poetical geography of the Grand valley, called Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei.

I like those coincidences, those interconnections, those airy similarities.

Bij de Papoea's op bezoek

Bij de Papoea's op bezoek

Om de nieuwsgierigheid naar de mysterieuze vallei van de Papoea's te prikkelen. Hier een voorproefje van het boekje 'Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei' dat zo juist is verschenen en te bestellen bij lulu.nl Zie elders op dit blog

Het boekje bestaat uit een 30 tal korte doorkijkjes naar de vallei en zijn bewoners, de Papoeas.


LAND VAN STILTE

Ik was in de Baliemvallei. Ik was er kort. Ik heb geluisterd, mijn stem niet verheven. Ik wist niet op welke toon ik spreken kon. Als een vreemde zou ik spreken, mogelijk zelfs als een verdwaalde stomme mens die geen woorden uiten kan. Welke stem zal ik gebruiken, nu ik terug ben, ver weg. De stem van de hoop, de weemoed, van de moed der wanhoop. De stem van de Papoea’s? Kan ik met goed fatsoen hun stem lenen? Maar ik spreek en versta hun taal niet. Ik begrijp niets van wat ik hoor dat ze zeggen. Ik ben niet de enige. Stel dat ze praten over hun land en je weet niet wat ze bedoelen. Je weet eigenlijk van niets. Zij kennen elk pad, elke bergrichel, elke bocht in de weg. Ze glijden niet uit. Ze weten waar water uit de bergwand sijpelt, welke insecten zoet smaken, wanneer de vlinders zich ontpoppen, ze weten waar hun grondgebied op houdt, de koffie groeit en ze een muurtje kunnen bouwen voor de veldjes met zoete aardappel. Zonder moeite vinden ze de schelpfossielen in de modder van de rivier, de vruchten die eetbaar zijn, het hout voor de omheining, de orchidee in het bos. Welk land, zeg je? Dat van de Papoea’s, dat dáár in de grote vallei, dat land ook
achter de bergen. Hun land, vraag je, alsof het niet hun land is en als ik knik, haal je de schouders op. Het land dat ze al dertig duizend jaar bewonen, bedoel je, dat ze al zevenduizend jaar bewerken met hun handen? Ja, maar dat weten ze zelf niet, denk je. Hoe kunnen ze tellen tot zevenduizend als je leefruimte ophoudt bij het volgende dorp? Hoe kunnen ze de tijd meten als de zwart gerookte mummie van een driehonderd jaar terug de oudste voorvader is, die ze kennen. Ze hebben geen geschriften, geen documenten, geen stenen gebouwen, de archeologie zoekt naar vreemde, onbekende dingen inhun land, zullen ze zeggen. Het zoeken in en om de dorpen maakt
alleen maar wantrouwig, het zoeken in hun grond, die wordt
omgewoeld en mee genomen voor het C14-onderzoek om de
ouderdom van menselijke voorwerpen te bepalen, van zaden die achtergebleven zijn tussen het menselijk en dierlijk afval rond verdwenen dorpen. Zij mogen zelf nog de vindplaatsen aanwijzen, begeleiden als gidsen, de geheimen van de bodem tonen. Meer niet. Dat is genoeg, zeggen de zoekers. Maar wat gevonden wordt, is toch van hun en niet van de vinders, moeten ze denken. Het is hun land ten slotte, waarover we het hebben. Dat weten ze zonder het te zeggen. Daarvoor hebben ze geen C-14 nodig, geen bewijzen uit hun eigen bodem. Ze kennen ook de regenboog zonder de kennis van optische wetten. Ze zwijgen. Dat hebben ze geleerd. De vallei is een
land van stilte, van ongesproken woorden, ongezegde dingen, van doodse stilte. Goed, de wind roert zich, de rivier stroomt, de mensen lopen naar hun dorp. Maar ze zwijgen. Hun land sluimert.

welcome to the visitors

Hello Visitors,


This blog is about my travels. Enjoy the stories and the pictures. Visitors, view my books and get your inspiration. The world is exciting, just see and love it. Leaf through the pages, float on my words and keep cool. Airports are the cathedrals of this time, the forests are our souls. Forget amusement and glamor, listen and hear the silence of the earth.


In 2009, I traveled to West-Papua (Indonesia) and  visited the Baliemvalley in the heart of the island. Up till 1938, it was a white spot on the map of the western world. It still is a mysterious place to go.  I wrote a little book about it, meditations and memories. A new style of geography, an experience of body and soul. (In Dutch)





"Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei"


It is available at Lulu.com (verkrijgbaar bij Lulu.com)
.

Baliem Valley - book (in Dutch)

Hello Visitors,

This blog is about my travels. Enjoy the stories and the pictures.

My last travel led me to West-Papua (Indonesia). I visited the Baliem valley, that was a white spot on the map for a long time. It still is a mysterious place to go. Recently, I wrote a book about it. In Dutch!



"Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei"
It is available at Lulu. (verkrijgbaar bij Lulu)
.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua

1

‘Watch me. I stand alone. No, I do not long for compassion. This is my site, this my position in real life,’ she says. ‘May be you saw me before, perhaps on another spot. (Think f.e. of the water color W. Turner, classical landscape Finberg Complete Collection nr. CCLXIII-189) I am one of the many. I am so different you even don’t understand; you don’t see it either. My dress is made of soft organic material almost like velvet. Feel it yourself. Touch me tender. Out of the fog I am here in a sudden standstill like silence in dramatic music. Nearly a ghost but in a living body as most ghosts are. Emerging from nowhere, I am your scary dream and all of a sudden gone, though still here. I’m the beginning of the forest or the end of the woods, when all trees have gone for ever. Maybe I‘m the last one you should take care of, admire and revere as the old Druids did long ago. Almost a fossil I am, a remnant of the past. I remind you of something you never saw and though has always been present in your mind. A shadow without body, a body with no shadow. Your dream of last night. A dark blue deep sea where life wavers and thrives. Under water, deep down, life without shape or contours, just a density life passes through. But who are you and your camera? You remind me of Marcovaldo, the man of Calvino who left the countryside and moved to the incomprehensible city. His twin brother you are, I mean, who left the town in opposite direction and got lost in nature. Why do you roam this lonely place?’

 She once tumbled down. On this very site she beautifully hides. Like a queen she lies fully stretched and calm and royal. How many years ago she came down, I don’t know. Long enough to let herself overgrown, all over her body, smooth, lovely and incessantly but slowly and unnoticed as life creeps and seeps in her untangled and hideous ways. Mosses, lichens and spider’s webs all over and close to her secret spot everywhere. Her bark is a fine fur coat, a nursery for insects, ants, bugs, beetles. Occasionally bears sniff around for honey from her delicate skin. Look at the colors, the fine tissues and the tiny sprouts from her bark. A micro world of crawling life generation after generation constructing and destroying life she produces in an intense and inextricable symbiosis. A queen for ever in the cloud forest.

 Why is she that impressive and so untouchable real although invisible for the largest part? Imagine her height, all the foliage and the rustling in the mountain wind. She lives in different spheres, layers, up into the sky, the universe. By the way, what will be her age? Count the rings of her trunk inside. Imagine you have to climb her all the way to the top. A trunk that huge and wide as if the roots even want to protect her hidden head like a Buddha I once saw in an ancient city of the past. Growing high up in the sky, the skin hides the flow of life juices underneath. All the way as if there is no gravity, no force to keep her low. One needs high heels to admire her all over her fertile body and is still to short. And tall she is, indefinitely taller she will grow beyond imagination, beyond my time of life. She helps to grow herself by creating darkness around her foot and middle, striving for sunlight at the top. When dogs are still puppies one should look at their feet to imagine how big they will grow as adults. This is impossible for the queens of a cloud forest which cover the slopes of the mountains.

Who built this wide bridge so deeply in the tropical forest. You know the names of Juan, Julio, Sergio and maybe a Maria or Clara? They put the pillars, they layed the fundamentals, they dug into the slope of the valley sides. They got a lot of money or they had no money at all and no alternative as jobless workers. They labored and sweated, they made love not knowing anything of the children of the king who would never reach each other. The valley was too deep. Or a big company brought with loaders the mechanical parts and the mechanics connected the parts and disappeared as if nothing happened here and the birds came back to their nests and the trees restarted their eternal rustling. A cast iron frame under the high canopy, framing endlessly the passageway over the deep valley floor. It reminds me of my toy box and its mechanical parts, I played with for hours. A bridge was one of the most ingenious object to construct. Okay. Is this the end of the hike, the floor of the invisible valley too deep and that wide? What about the echo in this dense forest of the valley? Even the fall of a stone, a real big stone would not be heard. There is no floor? This is a floating world? Or is it the entry, the gateway without name to nothingness hiding under densely overhanging foliage. It is all too close, even your words vanish, the silence is in front of you, starts right at your feet. Maybe it is the beginning of a new life on the other side, the unknown. Perhaps you need wings to fly like angels have.

2

Standing on the windward side of the crater I breathe deeply as one does to prevent hyperventilation or when one feels enclosed in too small a room with too many people. An prescient breath as if to defend one self against an attack. Perhaps as the people did in the subway of Tokyo, when terrorists put poisonous gas in the deep tube. The other side of the volcano crater is closed today, forbidden to climb. It is cheaper to close down a rim side than to pay well equipped rescue workers. Do you hear the sirens? Clouds of sulfur would suffocate all life, yours included. By the way, did you forget that sulfurous openings in the earth and the ocean floors are the primeval birthplace of life? That is where the archaic bacteria thrived and still seem to do. That is where we will be deadly poisoned. Strange whims of nature which disturbs one’s linear idea of evolution of life on this earth. Look how barren these slopes are. Where ever you want to stand on the leeward or the windward side, it always depends on the wind and your love for life.

 A parking place next to the crater of the active volcano. A big place, a unique place for a thriller, a perfect murder in the poisonous air. It will be difficult to remember the cars, the drivers, the passengers one has seen although there are not so many cars today.
The possibilities of unsolved murder, however, are almost countless even apart from the sulfur itself and its untraceable deviling in the air. The volcano a real temptation and a challenge. A trail up the hill in the back to have a better sight on the crater is an escape of last resort. Smoke. All of a sudden the wind turns. People run back to their cars. The murderer is there, misuses the chaos? Do you smell the sulfur seeping into the lungs? Do you feel the tremble of the mountain the animals feel. There are no animals you say?

 Cozy vultures, black and big from close by, on the watch in the wind still trees, near the very top of the trees. They sit together for ever, on the watch but calm and stoic as old philosophers meditating the wind, the sky and the time. Although chased away from their nest on the sandy soil just a moment ago when we climbed to their nests, hiking through long grasses on the rather steep mountain slope. Now, we watch and they negate us as if we are air though their potential enemy, they know. A picture of lamed freedom, wide view. The camera clicks and another time. No movement in the body, no turn of the narrow, weird necks. Soon they will be back on the nest. Out of sight, out of the picture. They trust nobody, maybe Marcovaldo knows more about them, perhaps he is their friend and partner of natural conversation about rain, wind, the heat and the cold, the thin air, their weight and the indispensable vigor of their wings.

 I call you: gardens in the tree etc. No black bird, no early morning, no wind. I call you: beautiful – a variance of a Dutch verse (Jan Hanlo). I call you ghosts in the night, to continue in my way this verse, over which the wind brushes past. Slowly moving beings of the past, here present. Seen at daylight they remind me of Ireland where I have never been.

Prehistoric beings stopped developing, evolution interrupted. Desolated nests of big birds, flown away, disappeared, coming back next year or later. Too much sulfur in the air. I call you: beautiful.








3

A twin sister of the fallen queen.
A fairy tale about a double personality and schizophrenia in the woods, dangerous for nature lovers from the city, who adore indiscriminately everything outdoors. Dreamers, hikers, magicians of their own world. And she with the same age, same miracle of micro life. Twins are sensitive for unseen things, they say, clairvoyant a word for what we cannot see or touch or smell. And so it always begins, nothingness, the invisible and then we speak of creation or a miracle and we call it belief, how would we call it otherwise, nonsense maybe and you think that is really different or even better? A tree never walks away – as long as one does not read poems. Sometimes a tree falls down. Poor queen, poor reader. Marcovaldo does not like to leave the forest.

 Out of the way, a hearse is coming up. Slowly, a kind of full speed ,appropriate for death like music changing from andante to vivace. When I was young the older men would take off their hat out of respect. Respect for the dead, for death? A man, a woman, a child, who knows, that is on its way, going somewhere unknown? See the man on the left, in front of the hearse, half turning away, with his mobile and plastic bag, see the horses and their knitted white blankets, the cab man in his jacket, the mourners, one with his bike at hand. They don’t take off their hat, they don’t wear a hat these days. They are all busy, in touch and think of tomorrow, when this street will be empty or crowded by people who go to the market. Yes, better think of tomorrow when death comes by. Who feels at ease when death is passing along? Life passes too fast. I miss the hats.

 Is it Saint Anthony or a local notable, a man of standing? The saint of the birds, the patron of the sufferers of pestilence? What is the difference, his holiness. Look, the way he listens to what we do not hear. Birds sing, prisoners call or shout, the earth deep down trembles and sighs, that is what he listens to so concentrated and far away at the same time? He holds his arm we do not feel the pain of. He measures the rhythm of life, his body, the sensation of the touch? He slavers the honor of his statue he strived for during his life? And is he happy that he cannot see the sculptured person around the corner? His colleague, competitor, his friend for ever now? He is proud to be in his company, both of them enjoy their own world, status and the people who admire them. Maybe he thinks why do you take a picture of me and not of him around the corner? Something shameless, not that much polite? You are a friend?

They look to be a group of laborers. Do they perform an act for the publicity of the bank? Or are they deliberating and preparing a strike. They smoke secretly, you assume, a cigarette outdoors and talk about the girl last night?


They look tough guys standing strong, shoulders, arms and hands strongly. They stand in front of a bank, white color workers? No women, apart from the living one who sits on the stairs. Maybe also one in the middle and one at the left hand side. Workers at least. Who brought up this idea of a collective statue? An old tradition or a new initiative to support the common people?

4

‘The man on the right side of the wall reminds me of Kafka, the famous author of Der Prozess. I wonder how the mural has been painted. By one man or a collection of street painters, a guild of revolutionaries, on order or free of charge. I did not know Kafka wears big glasses when overseas. Wherever I see him, I’m always jealous of his full black hair. It is his best protection against all odds and the source of his endless writing about man who lost his way in his own human and dehumanized labyrinth. His hair that stands for ever, gives his eyes a dreamlike, absent, almost staring look. No, a dreamlike amazement as if the world will never end and does not show where it begins. Clearly, Kafka is lost and nearly bewildered although restraint just like the fat woman with her shopping bag is in front of him on the sidewalk. Not knowing she is fat and lost. Waiting as the boy and the man in the side alley. Waiting as if nothing happens in town. As if there is no process going on, for decades and even almost a century.

The mural is his dream. A colorful, dynamic and vital dream, turning over and over in his unconscious mind. It is the man on his back on the stone bench beneath the mural who is the core of the picture. He is right in the middle however not intrusive. Look how calm and motionless he lies on the bench. His name and his secret is Marcovaldo? He is lost in his dream of the countryside, the land and the animals. Or he is just tired of his job as a night guard in a ten stories apartment? Soon he will awake, stand up and walk into the street, into the crowd. It will be too hot in the sun, the dream will be over. Who will recognize him, when he enters the big building and says hello to his wife even when she is not at home. He will turn on the music and think of his dream. He will try to remember what the dream was about. When the rain comes down like a drizzle, the paint will drip, the dream be gone?

I see the bells swing in the tower. No, that is a lie. The first thing is the sound of the bells I hear when I walk over the square. Then I see the swing. A man asks me where I come from. I love the church taken too close by and the bells hanging still. Somebody in the tower has a duty to ring bells every hour. He will be deaf or become deaf of the bells. Or he is blind as many muezzin are? The church is too big for the small digital camera? I like the thick walls and the dark entrances which cover the people who come in and will loose their soul for a moment. The dark will veil your sin and open your heart. The holy is separated from the secular by the dark entrance. Will I climb the stairs? I love the paint and plaster coming down from the walls. It makes the church even more solid and absorbs better the sound of the bells. Nobody minds what I think.

They look square as they are. Townsmen, officials, bureaucrats or doctors Marcovaldo would think.
See how they wear their costumes, look at their shoes.
It makes them cool. It is a privilege to look at us, they seem to say. They communicate with each other as they always have done, no emotions and reticent upon common people.
This is a well organized society with a hierarchy of professions and persons, important and less important. We are the intellectuals, we wear glasses. Backs turned to each other, they transform the space into a square and shape their mind and their manners. Gentlemen of standing, impressive and strict. They dislike noisy street life and boisterous men of the street. They are honored not loved, I think.

5

Sunset in town. A market place. One hears the drums from the back streets. Little boys come around the corner and jump up and down.
Time to make music, to earn money, to make the people happy and to forget all troubles of the day.The night will bring music and dance.

The boys bring tall and glamorous ladies to the marketplace. They carry the ladies with care and joy. Well dressed in red and beige, tall as the arch of the church entrance they are. The ladies swing left and right, they go for a dance. They bow and greet the trees and the houses and the church around the marketplace.

 They smile and the birds become silent looking straight into the smiling faces of the dancing ladies.And, please, watch the fine woven window on a secret spot in their dress.The drums grow louder and faster. The tall ladies dance and smile. Innocent, peeping boys?








6

The crowded bus we took you do not see. Neither the reception we got at the entrance of the hot springs nor the troop of young guys and girls tagged to us. We pay an entrance fee. We choose a guide. So, they all guided us, told stories by turns. Here is the mud of sulfur and bubbles, the earth breathes red. The boys and girls jump from hot stone to hot stone. To show they understand their profession and they care for us, our money. They stir with a long stick in the pulsing blood of the earth. Melted, red iron from the stomach of the earth. In the far back a smoking volcano difficult to reach if not impossible.The children still fight to be the only and exclusive guide. The losers start already to curse and use their stick trying to hurt the others. They become angry, shout in frustration. Money is what they want, money they all need. I don’t remember if they all got money or some of them twice.

The bus does not stop for the beach. The bus goes all the way to the end of the small peninsula. We are halfway the afternoon and it is still hot. For miles the beach is on the left behind a row of houses, behind gardens and trees. Sometimes we get a glimpse of the flat, greenish sea. Women step down from the bus, colorful dressed women climb the bus on their way home. The beach is a promise. At this hour, this day of the year there is nobody on the beach. No girls to look at, no guys to play baseball, no bars for a drink or a snack. Are we disappointed? The beach is long and broad, the beach is light to dark sand in front of empty hotels and empty terraces.This is not too bad, it is a privilege. The sun begins almost unnoticed somewhere its setting and all of a sudden we get company on the beach. A lonely swine walks black and slowly on the beach. He enjoys the beach, the sunset, lonely as he is. One never knows about the next day, particularly not a fat swine.

 Miraculous island in the lake. The immense big lake once robbed of its very fish, the name I forgot, by a president who was more interested in money than fish. Fish sold to Japanese for their never stilled taste for fish. However, beautiful lake, I will sing a song, a song of your volcanic beauty and your stillness. Behind the border of the lake, a strip of land is a small pond in the woods. The water shallow and dark. Closed in, a kind of small moor, no a muddy pond as I said. A fallen tree out of sight serves as a bridge to the other side, the invisible trail through the woods to the meadows, the horses and the cows. But, stop and look. Here on the spot. Incomprehensible sunlight between the trees, red and white reflected by the pond, the dark water and a trunk of another old tree fallen down. Secrets of illumination, the breaking of materialized light. Camera obscura and infra red at the same time.

The day ends, the night comes, I happen to be here. No thoughts no worries. A floating house covered with straw on an iron frame.To fish or to live in. Not a living being to see. This is the sea and the shore, endlessly stretching behind what we see. However, no Hemingway or his old man, no Anaïs Nin in her glass boat. Nor my old aunt who lived in a so called living boat during the War. A boat amidst reed, her apartment in the main city an address to hide her beloved brother, my role model as a stoic man who took all pleasure and pain for granted. And she taught me to walk over a narrow foot board, later to keep my balance in life. This is a quiet place. On the left, almost on shore a shining object, a car on its side or an unrecognizable machine. They are part of the scene. They are indispensable. The picture will be ruined when one of the objects will be removed.

7

This reminds me of the paintings of Dennis Hoppper.The clear planes of color, the straight lines, the horizontals of the chair without end. Painting with a stop watch. The magic touch to immobilize and to bring to a standstill the things he paints. The fixation of things and people. The excommunication of movement. All things ready made, smooth, material, finished, unchangeable.
Just there, for ever. It is late in the afternoon, the sky is gray all over the place, the wide open place. The sky is cloudy, fully covered, too damp, we will not get a sunset. This chair on the beach, that ‘s it. Emptiness, okay. A concrete object made abstract, on a lonely beach. Emptiness and a desolate evening. I do not dare to go there and sit in the chair - thin as air. Soon it will rain again, Marcovaldo, you know.

 I interrupt my walk, stay stand still on the trail, left and right under wood and trees. My legs stop, my breathing slows down, my eyes focus. So close to the eye, so dangerously near to the spider. Who is afraid of whom? First I see the green leaf, then the spider and finally ‘spider eats spider.’ An order of observation, an order of the visual, the logic of observation and the mind. That is how it works, without hesitation, spontaneously and surprised. Or the other way around. Curiosity that alerts, registers every movement, opens the eye. A scene of a murderous embrace, sneaky, cruel, tasty or just nature at work? The spider as victim and victor, the endless transformation, mutation, the law of survival and fate. The jungle, they call it and I think of wars and wars. The leaf is eaten and then the next and the next and the next spider.

 A long walk today. We pass a hamlet and another hamlet all different and alike. In the last hamlet we see him. A family in and around the farm.


Tall trees and a grass field in front. A man on a horse rides into the house, the stable where they live together. We greet, wave hands, we pass the farm. Some minutes later. I hear a sound, I hear a trot, turn around and there they are, the young guy and proudly his horse. You see the white blot on his nose, the dead trees in the back. My camera just in time. A living statue. No neighing. Admiration of vitality and daily courage. This is just his start in life. Oh young man. The beautiful years to come and the horses and the girls.

 Be careful, walk slowly and with prudence. It looks to be your trail you walk. Look at your feet, your big muddy shoes. They are invaders, the ants you do not see, will think. You cross their path, spoil their route, destroy their meticulously walked out streets to the other side. Incessantly they march from right to left and back. Or they form two armies, do they build two ant hills? I do not know where the queen hides. It is not plausible there are two queen so close to each other. Hidden behind the leaves, the ants industriously cross the path, our path? Continue to look at them and you will be remunerated: they move slowly, well disciplined, the greenish leaves as their camouflage as long as they move at pace. Soldiers with a firm belief, a strong will, spurred by the scent of the queen. Being on their way to become a hill, food in the storage, child–ants, movers of leaves? Cleaners of the forest, the ground, trails and restless builders of hills. Recycling leaves and life.

 My kingdom for a horse. Incredible. I do not believe my eyes. I zoom in and there is a horse that bends its neck forward, tastes and carefully sips salt water from the almost flat sea. It explores its realm. A new kingdom is born. I feel like an intruder. Imagine. I tell somebody a story about a horse.

Once upon a day a horse decides to go for walk and for a drink to the beach. It took some time, the horse however found the beach all by itself. It tasted the water and said this is exactly what I was after. And the horse established a kingdom and lived for ever along the beach. Nobody would believe it. Look. A small white surf in the back shows a silent, windless afternoon.

8

A rock in the light surf. Black or dark, greenish or dark blue its color depending on the reflection of the afternoon sunlight on the water. An immobile and quiet image. Perfection. For a while I forget where I’m. In Costa Rica, in Thailand, where rocks are scattered along the limestone coast. In no man’s land. No horses, no people, no sails. Below the surface may be fishes swim in circles or straight lines after fishes in circles and lines. Perhaps sea grasses wave forward and backward. A labyrinth to play tag, to keep the fishes in shape and sexy.

 The beach close to sunset. A moment of the day you do not recognize when you consult your wrist watch. I do not have a watch since I do not work anymore. The locals live of tourism or drugs. It depends and makes a difference. It sometimes isn’t needed to repair things anymore. The mind of the last ones in disrepair. This man repairs a hammock. He rents rooms and tells about his travels in the Caribbean. He is an honest man, you see. I like his face and the palm leaves. A serious face and a bit sad, I don’t know why. Even more serious is what you do not see in the picture. Nor you hear the sound, the dim bum on the stony floor underneath the hammock. A man fell out of his hammock. At my age, it takes quite a time to become fully repaired.

 It is the crowded city, the hurry, being on the way. To the market, the office, the church, the cemetery and the circus. Women with bags, civil servants,clowns, priests – I forget the order – undertakers as finalists. Here again the camera as stop watch. Look at the leg of the shopping woman, her foot up in the air, her walk interrupted. She is the example for the statue, made bigger and more inevitable. Unmistakable this is a woman, in bronze and solid from the outside. Big, mighty and vigorous.


No need for helpers, for men, no jokes about emancipation here? A stand in the way for pedestrians or a reminder not to hurry in the middle of life. Look at her breasts and big thighs, her powerful performance. She is untouchable?

 An explosion of the sun, new suns are born, it seems.
The sky mysterious and threatening. What will happen? A volcano exploded and ashes spread over the sky? Right, it rains and is still raining, it drizzles. Fine raindrops on the lens of the camera. The sea in blue horizontal planes and contours stretching endlessly wide and for ever.

Almost a painting thanks to the rain, the digital technique and the clumsiness of the camera man. Photography as art or the beginning of a new art, to double and redouble reality, to color and discolor the world, to fix the flowing and streaming, to cut to pieces and paste collages, to endlessly repeat and re-create, to start anew and then we see again the explosion of the sun.

9

Finally, that’s what we are here for. You forgot, the hike became a bit more comprehensive with all those detours, pictures and words.The blue balustrade to sit on and to turn your back, that is the perfect way to show he is a bit indignant. He would have been really angry if he knew we went first to a natural history museum of frogs and toads. Let me call it a ranolarium.



We were that afraid to miss them. Now he is here, in the wild, on his balcony. Taken in the dark of the night. Flash lighted. We will never know if he was that fast to turn in time. Afraid of the flashlight or of red eyes. May be he slept already or better is still asleep. He is not very interested.

This one is more of a vain character, not afraid and slightly undisciplined.
He doesn’t feel threatened. Now I am here, he says, look at me. My narrow eyes are not regular. They express my inner emotions and my self respect. My skin is well shaped, colored and dotted, sensitive and vulnerable, but tough and flexible. I do not hide here. Admire me and tell a story about my appearance when you are back home. My color is just slightly different from the leaf I sit on. Mark my words. As soon as you leave me, you will hear from me.The night just starts.

It is the last day, an organized tour and rain and clouds on top of the volcano. It is cool. A cloud forest is not a contradictio in terminis although we feel to be at the end of the world, its last, final, end terms. The forest shows its clouds – to honor its name - and not much more. Okay, the trees breathe dampness, fog, mist. We recognize the majestic queens we love so much. Paved roads and pebbles and wooden framed stairs.


Nearby there should be a lake, a famous colored lake. Watch the signs and the information board. Here we are near the crater of the Poas Volcano in a national park not far from San José, the capital of Costa Rica. Read the text. This picture is what I call framing reality.

Hotel Cortez Azul. Last night. One dog, two keys, two locks, many more cast iron bars, one frame? Do you here the early morning frogs, Marcovaldo? Or is it the plane?








Copyright: Photos by Derk Cools and Ivan Nagelkerken

Costa Rica and Nicaragua

My Journey in the Spring of 2004

Do you love frogs? No, I do not mean frog legs at dinner, but frogs in nature, alive and ready to jump. Then, go to Costa Rica, a country with at least 150 of known amphibian species. May be, you will miss one or two, don’t worry, the rest is available but, for sure, very difficult to find by day. And, furthermore, I can assure you, there is more to see. Think of the volcanoes, the cloud forests and tropical beaches. This variety of landscapes makes it difficult to choose where to go, although it is not really a big country. The capital is in the middle, a crossroad of overcrowded highways. So, you can go all directions but the capital. If you are interested in frogs go to mountains, leave the city to consumers, people who prefer to be entertained. By the way, it is a cultural city and offers a lot of things to do, I heard from a lady in Cahuita, who went every weekend to San José for concerts, she said. At least it is a five hour drive, so I guess she stayed there overnight. She was an attractive woman, I remember. And what about Nicaragua, the northern neighbor country, even closer by than Cahuita on the Caribbean shore?

If one really likes history and culture,- and of course you do - one will enjoy the old colonial towns of Léon and Granáda, their small alleys, churches, squares, bars, catholic processions and the little boys who play music and carry giant woman-puppets through the streets. And students show you how they study and the whereabouts of nightlife. Sorry, I won’t talk about the civil war and what it has done to the country, the people. They earn more knowledge, analysis and debate. During the civil war, I did not do anything but reading the newspapers about it and feeling myself indignant. So, I lost my rights here. For the best, it is over now or almost over apart from maybe some far off pockets in the mountains and some vagary groups of former soldiers or other enterprising men. There are still rumors and it is perhaps not  safe in all parts of the  this rugged country . When I see soldiers in countries I travel, it remains difficult to distinguish between the feeling of being protected or threatened. I did not, however, notice any danger or insecurity during my travel by public bus in Nicaragua. I felt at ease. And for nature, the landscape is even more amazing, say tantalizing, than in Costa Rica. A long ridge of active, smoking volcanoes and sulfurous hot springs, in the south a large lake and a marvelous volcanic island called poetically Ometepe. The name reminds me of the word onomatope with a tiny difference of spelling and meaning. Sounds live their own life in the human mind. And beautiful it is, this island. As if one comes back in a small, traditional world of a bucolic rhythm, cows, horses, birds of prey, farmers and fishermen.Take the ferry and a public bus, it is okay. The hostels are picturesque, sometimes still of colonial style.The people are relaxed. Time is fading out.

To be honest I did not really prepare for the travel to these countries in Central America. At least not the way I did when I traveled to Yucatan and Guatemala, along the Ruta Maya. So, no travel guides, no stories, no maps, no friends over there, just a little booklet in a secondhand bookstore. I bought it in the Dog Ear bookshop at the corner of the Valencia Street, a parallel street of the Mission in San Francisco. Outside the store, every morning, not too early, I think about ten o’clock the shopkeeper put some boxes with second/third hand books on the sidewalk.  It is one of the many stores, but a good one, cozy and intimate as a bookshop should be. I remember its name from the brown paper bag I got, a bit too large, for the books. I’m not a lover of dogs neither of dog ears. A book should be stainless even a second hand book. And dog ears remind me of swine ears, a delicacy here on the island of Curacao at Christmas. ( I am vegetarian) The title of the booklet caught my eye ‘tracking the vanishing frogs.’ In those days the topic was already outdated. Frogs came back all over the world – without warning or explanation – from nowhere? All by themselves silently or loud out. The title, however, intrigued me, a memory of the seventies, when the first alarming signals of a world wide expanding pollution became loud, clear and urgent but untidy. Chapter 2 was called the Costa Rica Gold in which a golden toad was charmingly compared to Marilyn Monroe. An exciting comparison particularly for somebody who doesn’t know the difference between a frog and a toad – something for a herpetologist not for a common hiker. I liked the colored pictures of toads and frogs in the booklet and of course the photograph of the golden toad of Monte Verde in Costa Rica and the subtitle: ‘This stunning toad hasn’t been seen since 1989.’ That is what was meant by vanishing frogs. Something strange and mysterious, that triggered my imagination and sense of adventure. Something that sounded like a challenge, possibly a new duty. Tracking the vanishing, a vague similarity to the finding of the Grail. Who would not loose track? A peaceful enterprise, when I take into account that the pacifistic Quakers started the community in Monte Verdi and laid the basis for this Natural Reserve. Do you here the Beatles?

So I bought the booklet, that brought me to Costa Rica and Nicaragua in the spring of 2004. And that was all I prepared for the hike to these two countries. Fortunately, I have a more or less metaphysical mentality and do enjoy all kind of unsolved questions. It helps me to return to a form of basic life free from luxury and solved problems.The travel starts when I start the travel. As the Chinese say a long march begins by the first step.This time I had a digital camera to put my brains to a standstill and to witness at the same time I was hiking in Costa Rica and later on through Nicaragua. Maybe, it doesn’t matter which places I hike. Of more importance is, how I look at the landscape, the volcanoes, craters, cloud forests, towns, cities, statues, beaches, cities, people and horses, swine, vultures, ants and not to forget the toads and frogs hiding by day but caught at night. I like them all as I do dislike them all at times. A metaphysical view?
Too big a word for keeping distance to the world around in order to connect myself intensely, better and even more directly to her. l try to keep my mind open, not hampered by bookish wisdom or knowledge. Rather difficult for a desk man. Implicitly, I hope to feel better equipped for the concrete and the particular, and to stick to that level of experience. I do not turn away from information and knowledge, but I know ‘enough’, I think, to go for this way of traveling. When I show here as a first picture a marvelous tree in the cloud forest, I know of course frogs live up there more safely from predators – apart from snakes - between the water carrying leaves of the hanging Bromelia.

And talking of amphibians, the terrain becomes water and land, their history goes far back to the geological time called Carboniferous.To know this, I admit, makes one even more patient to look for a while at pictures of frogs, animals with amazing back legs which enable them to suddenly jump into a fairy tale or a poem. The best way to loose track?

Anyhow, here I do present a small collection of pictures and a guiding text in a frame in order to make the images autonomous, creating and becoming in this way a world in itself. Enjoy the miniatures and go yourself to create a world of your own. Good luck.

Traveling in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Derk Cools