There Is My Life

There is my life and you can still see me as I was.

This was my life

This was the form of this one life. 

This print is part of a series called " Your Paler Face " that I have been working on for more than two years and that tries to portrait the transition from life through death to another level of existence. This is one of the first prints of this series that I have taken. When death sets in, a certain paleness appears in each and every creature be it human, animal or plant. Paleness, as I mean it, has to be understood also in a symbolic way.The spirit leaves the form and the form gets paler but retains it beauty for a while. This is a sad, delicate and scary moment often.

The Blue Sky And Me

I love these two photos so much!
Without really being aware of it I have created images that have a 3D perspective.

The coral trees were in full blossom. The nectar of the bright orange flowers made the perfect late-afternoon snack for a black sun bird.

I have often wondered if I could choose any form of life what I would like to be ? What form of life would I like to experience? 

Would I like to be a bird? Sometimes it seems that they are so much more vulnerable than other creatures and their life is shorter.

But the experience of freedom must be immense.

Mystical Lavender

May be you will say to me one picture of the lavender is enough !

In that case, I will tell you: look away ! Cause I ain't gonna stop.

I had a strong vision of this lavender, that I have been trying to find!

My vision was to see and capture the inside, the essence of the lavender on film.
And I have taken pictures for weeks. 

To get what I want to see.

Until today when I received what I have been longing to have.

This is my fathers's lavender.
It reminds me of him.
 And I do love this lavender.

MADONNA DE LOURDES

This is my Madonna de Lourdes.

I have brought her from far to Africa.

She has no hands anymore

But this is how she watches over me.

YOUR OWN RIGHT WORDS

It is difficult to say or write something meaningful or beautiful that has not been said by someone already before.

What you want to say might have been said in a more poetic, clearer and better way decades or hundreds of years before you. No, you can be even sure that it has been said.

Everything that there is in this world has been said already before. And MILLIONS of words spoken by others over the centuries are still floating the universe with their vibrations - attracting alike words.

That is why I often hesitate to write. To find the exact right words is an art and that is the reason why Paolo Coelho is a genius. And why Hemingway and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were geniuses before him. That is why they are different and special.

To find the right words, YOUR right words is the challenge.

WORDS are like gold. They shine through darkness and they have a weight. The more you add the more the more their weight is felt by the ones who give them and by the ones who receive them.

And they have the power to live through more than hundred years of solitude.

They possess all the power that there is. You might like and not want to part with the weight of something spoken to you in love and admiration. There is a chance that the beauty of those words will stay with you until your hair turns white and you are old.

Others stick to you like a bad conscience and you can never forget the pain they caused although you tried. They feel like a necklace of gold that is heavy and uncomfortable and like something of bad taste around your neck.

You say to me : " Just take it off".

 "Just try ", I say.

I started reading when I was a child. I was blessed to be with people who gave me books whenever I wanted and needed them. Other people's beautiful language and their play of words have shaped my own capacity of speaking and expressing myself. I can't remember the number of books I have read over the years. I just remember that I started to love words and language and to recognize the deep impact they have once spoken.

A word has to be looked at and turned around before saying it.
It's meaning has to be understood cause it sways and stays forever and I can't be taken back.

TIME IS ON MY SIDE

A couple of years ago my mother said to me : YOU NEED EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE. THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE. THERE IS NO TIME TO BE BORED.

Does time really exist? Or is it another framework developed by man because man simply needs always some sort of structure. Is it an illusion of the human mind because many of us can not imagine more than one live? So there has to be a beginning and an end. Are we creating time ourselves by giving it the right to exist?

And if time exists does, if we have created it, does it serve us or hurt us ?

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Years after my mother said the most fundamental sentence someone has ever said to me since my birth I would still take a step further and say : YOU NEED EVERY SECOND OF YOUR LIFE. 

There is absolutely no time to waste, no time to fight, no time for discontent and for complaints. 

By believing this the only consequence is that every day should be spent in creating something positive and valuable.

I do not mean however by that that life should be lived in a hurry and with the pressure and the fear that it will end soon and there will be no more chances. In fact there will be many more opportunities and chances.

But the seconds that you have been given in this life are one of the ingredients amongst others needed to complete your Work of life. The Masterpiece, our own special creation that we should give birth to and that sleeps inside us is created through time. 

I do not believe that we have only one life, I seem to know that we live many more. 

Unfortunate is that we can only remember the other lives when we have reached a higher state of spiritual Development. We remember when we evolve further. 

And then the concept of time becomes clearer and it is possible to understand that time is a continuum that is in fact continued through eternity and our lives.

We will be able to remember all the creative processes in detail in which we have been engaged before but we will also remember the beauty of our creations.

We will have the same knowledge that a tree possesses that has created a sculpture of amber over time- and there is also the knowledge how it is to be inside the amber. To be the amber.

Looking at live from this angle it does not matter anymore how many years it took for one man to finish the Sistine chapel but that it had to be completed up to a certain point...

IN THE LAST DYING LIGHT OF HIS OWN EYES IN ONE LIFE

And when we reach the port of entry to another world nobody stops us or says DO NOT ENTER. The guard  and the waving hand we see is in our mind only.

TIME IS ON YOUR SIDE. SO ENTER

Will I THINK OF YOU?

Only when it's cold

Am I am shivering

Against the wind

And suddenly from the inside

The core of me

From my deepest depths

Comes

A small warming flame

Which wants to grow

And I fight it

Until I realize I need it

Want it

To flow through me

To fill me

Because

It is you

And then I will think of you

Leonard Nimoy's (MR. SPOCK)

Piece and serenity in the desert

This story is for my father who truly loves churches and has shown me so many over the years. Nieu Bethesda has many surprises and one of them is this old church.

And I know he would have loved to be there. When I visited Nieu Bethesda two years ago with my father the church was closed.

Standing proud and tall..... as we all should.

This time we were so lucky that the new guardian of the church is our friend. The key is approximately half a meter long.

And Doooog is really suffering at the moment......... he has been on his feet since early morning and was following us all day long through the village

The inside is serene and surprisingly spacious.

I think church windows have inspired artists and painters all over the world through all the centuries. This one has given me as a gift a new inspiration.

For the last trip. I think it has a lot of style actually. Not too shabby. I imagine four white horses...just for the contrast.

A place of beauty

Old cast iron chandeliers.

And a lot of other beautiful details.

like this old organ.

The look through the back door to the outside. Blazing sunlight and the impression this is a lost place.

The settlements on the other side of the village.

But opulence inside.

Impressions of an hour

La Vie est belle souvent, mais tu dois regarder...
( I was told by a friend in Mauritania)

From time to time I like to do a little experiment. I sit back and imagine a friend had called me and requested that I show him the wonders of life in just an hour's time. I invite you to come with us today. Let me show you what I found.

At first I would show my friend this night-moth comfortably resting on my window since the early morning hours. A lucid light turquoise colored beauty.

Then, the wind breathing clouds onto the bright-blue canvas of the sky. The blue of the sky is sometimes so strong and bright that it can make you dizzy.

Until the blue has lost and it's color has been weakened and is shining through only occasionally through a crocheted-like cloud cloth.

Freshly cooked steaming hot pasta is one of the greatest wonders of life for me. Bless Italy. With oil, garlic and Parmesan. Perfect.

A while ago a big old beautiful tree had been cut in one of the alleys of my town. I took some of the cut-off rings home and painted them white. They have now a new life as rests for books and cups and glasses. But one wanted more. A seed has found new life in old matter.

I would not forget to show my friend the roots of a giant tree in my garden.

An adventurous and exhausted beetle caught on his back in a glass vase. The extended breath of god has saved him in the form of my hand.

A cat-child in deep and peaceful sleep on my couch.

Child or Cat? Cat-child. Peace from within.

And the last thing my friend has to see in this hour are the new swallow-nests in some old dusty enamel pots stored on a shelf on the veranda. It is the second year that the swallows have been using these pots as nests.

There are 8 swallows nests all over the house.