Curacao Crab

 CRAB OR COLOR
 TWO EYES
 STONE AND WHITE
WATER

Curaçao Seven Hills (Zevenbergen)

An excursion to Zevenbergen next to St Christoffel Hill park. On top, we arrive at the ruins of this former landhouse. Nature is back. The place is a kind of theater. The crumbled walls and the windows enable us to overview the lost kingdom of civilization.  A path over the ridge leads us to the last sabal or salpometta palm trees.

Factory of Miracles

Imagination
verbeelding

What's up?
Wat zien we hier? 


Smoke from a chimney?
Rook uit een schoorsteenpijp.


Polluted air?
Vuile lucht? 

A factory producing birds

Een fabriek die vogels
fabriceert

Imagination,maybe?

Fantasie misschien?

Malta island

prehistoric entrance of Valetta

50% off to become as honorable as the city

intimate bond

always on the spot

after a visit

in archaic french: les  fenestres

Feel at Home in Monchique

Monchique in the Hills

Monchique in the Hills

Recently I opened a new facebook website entitled Monchique in the hills. It's a site with pictures of the Portugese town of Monchique, in the Algarve. It provides a collection of albums, a selected collection on the basis of an issue: alleys, cars,  horticulture, buildings, ruins etc  One day I'll write a booklet Life in Monchique.

Seven Days in the Grand Valley (Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei) Translation

Fragment from chapter 11   ‘Drawn in the sand’ (page 47)

Today, we make a short trip in the valley – facing the unknown mountains beneath the dark clouds. It’s already late in the afternoon.  Rain is coming. I don’t know how long it will take and where we will be at the end of the day. Basically, one never does.  It’s okay, I think. Our guides are two young men, teachers in training. They guide us on request – in order to improve their knowledge and practice of the English language. They are allowed to skip lessons for one day.  Passing a gigantic mud stream of small gullies and slippery cobblestones – people drowned, any message in a newspaper? – We reach a broad path, a true road of asphalt constructed by the government, but now blocked by the mud and the collapsed bridge. The Papua is a born walker. Now, the traditional way of life is back again. Walking is the old way of moving, it determines how they look at the world, slowly, step by step, more intense than at high speed. The bridge is a ruin, a monument, the first rundown work of art I see. In case of emergency, the government has cross country vehicles at her disposal for her own activities .She can close and control the area. For her, the mud stream is a winning lottery ticket, a blessing in disguise. Slowly, we move up the mountain and it starts to rain. It drizzles and the mountain wind is strong. The great circulation of water is starting. Warm air rises up, condensates into clouds, becomes rain, a river, a flood and finally the sea. “What’s the height of the mountains”, I ask when my breath calms down. Actually, I don’t know what I bring about. At what height above the sea level is the valley and   I point my finger into the far. They stare at me. Are the mountains high? What is it that I ask them? And the sea, what about the sea and the mountains?  The sea, they know the sea from stories of land behind the mountains, of the capital where the aircrafts take off to bring food to the valley.  And in the period without airplanes, there was not anything like foraging from the coast to the valley. They had heard about the coastal area as the cradle of money, the old shells. (And they thought the shells grew on the branches of the trees) All expeditions from the coast got stuck in the mountains due to a lack of food en route. The mountains were high and built up in parallel rows along the coast and the slopes too steep for natural vegetation, often far too steep for cultivation of food. The coast and the sea were beyond imagination. They produced bad luck and disaster, barbarians, money and illness. The mountains here along the valley are accessible for walking; they hide the view on the sea. They are good for nothing here in the grand Valley. I pick up a stick and draw in the sand.

To be continued.

West-Papua

 

 

Who knows the mysterious, almost incredible story how the people of the Grand Valley ( Baliem vallei) could hide  so long -  without hiding - behind the high mountain ridges along the Northern coast of West-Papua and  how  an American pilot discovered them on a summer night (1938)  by the little lights, the fires under their pots. (  translated from Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei, page 17 edited in Dutch by lulu.com)

Down to earth

Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei van Derk Cools

This week I wrote a review about my book Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei (see boek besprekingen  of this website).  The book was written and published ( lulu) in 2009. Looking back, I missed a concise review. I call the book a geography of the senses.  I don't speak a Papuan language, but we share an existential experience. A  kind of awareness of rivers and woods, nature and gardening, of the sound and the fury.


Stoner 

John Edwards Williams

At the same time I read the book Stoner written by John Edwards Williams.  A totally different book, a classic novel of a professional teacher of English at the univversity of Missouri. It is a spectacular literary work about the life of an ordinary man who loves his profession of teaching. In my view is Stoner a modern Epicurist, a man of moderation and sobriety, a man sticking to his ideals.

Mushroom or fungus

This is a mushroom or a fungus. It grew around the trunk of a neem tree, an Indian tree. From close by, it looks like a monster or an ex-terrestrial being. At the same time, it is a miracle of color and form, a marvelous organism. It evokes all kind of thoughts and dreams about a world that finds its own shapes all by itself.

Heaven under construction

Dust and Thirst

the sky is the limit

Identity and the Eye

Is this a wheel?  No, these are two wheels although its the same wheel on the same parking place and different photographs at the same time  and the same place, a parking place

A crab on his way

The skin of his body and his legs almost colored as the stone underneath

Venice: some tourists

Tourists: two of a kind

This is the moment they are not aware of. They are two of the thousands of tourists in Venice. At this moment, however, they are all alone together.

Leonardo da Vinci in Venice

Diver's suit

Test Place the Canal

Surfing Outfit?