san francisco

de schone was?

Silves, Algarve

seize

the

day

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.

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,

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.