inspired by coincidence, or the run up to another move

It’s a beautiful large wooden chest, delicately carved on its front. My guess is that it is from Oman. The dark wood, the intricate work, its age, these are some of the things that give its origin away, and it is right in front of me, standing proud, reminding me of all the uncertainties heading my way.

We are leaving. I know that now. It is not written anywhere, but by now I can read the signs. It wont be just now. Many months will pass perhaps even before we know where. And then, only then, perhaps not even then, time will transform itself, and with it, so will our lives.

The time change I can predict and describe. The transformation of our lives, I can only wait to witness as a by stander.

First, time will be slow and heavy. Every evening I will welcome my husband to a tired home. One that has lived a full day and is ready to drink some warm milk and go to bed. He will be tired as well, the children will welcome him with excitement, knowing that with him comes the night, and rest, and only then another full day to fill. In the silence of the dark we might not speak of it, but it will be there. We will scrutinize time, as it lazily and distractedly waits and waits before giving anything away.

Some months from now it may choose to give us something. The sign may be clear of muffled, and then we will patiently wait some more. I will try to plan, without really knowing what to plan for. We will continue trying to believe in the permanence of our home, but knowing really that we are only playing this part, like characters from a play.

And then one day, somewhere in the not so distant horizon, time will pull off this lazy cloak and reveal our fate. And then I know what it will look like. This 80 year old maid will turn into a frenzied child. The world will revolve around us at high speed. It will be impatient and spoiled and demanding. So we will run, and run and run.

Soon after all -hell will break loose. How the children react to this, now no longer babies, will very much determine what this part will look like. All I know is that there will be a rough period. A rough ride.

But once its done, once the fairground has closed its doors and dimmed its lights, I will find my old friend again, the time from my home. The one that likes to sit for tea once the children have left for school. The one that stays up with me late into the night, making time for me to read or write to a dear old friend.

For the time being, time and me are hanging out, playing chess if you like, she makes a move, I make a move. We play with the kids and drink coffee. But we both know this will change. Its just a matter of time.

I just came back from a one week yoga retreat in the Sinai Desert.

Yes, you read right. I buggered off, no husband, no kids, for one entire week. Now, before you get over excited, let me explain that it has actually taken me one full calendar year, (actually, 14 months to be precise) to pull this off. The biggest block to doing it was – of course, guilt.

The idea came to me when my children were 2.5 and 1 yrs old respectively. The one yr old was still breastfeeding day and night (with emphasis on night, given that he was getting up, and more importantly getting me up, two to three times a night). My husband had moved to Holland, and I was in the process of packing up the house, finding schools, working out the tax rules as a freelancer in my new country and the like before joining him.

Did I mention that I had a photo exhibition going on?

So, in short, I was stressed and tired. I was also reading one of the most wonderful books I have read; ‘eat pray love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert (http://www.elizabethgilbert.com). I wont go into details of the book, but she does a retreat, so the exhaustion together with the book brought the idea to me. Truth be told, if it hadn’t been for my husband’s support, I probably would not have done it. That and …. serendipity.

As I was once again procrastinating and finding excuses as to why it was not a good time to do this, I received an email from a dear friend asking if I wanted to join her on a yoga retreat in April. I had to laugh, it was like destiny reminding me of my commitment to myself. My friend whom I had not seen in almost seven years, who I did not even know did yoga, was asking me to do exactly what my body had been asking me to do for over a year. Clearly it was time. One other thing happened, I panicked at the idea of waiting another four months to do it. Only then did I realize that I was again over tired, and that I sill owed this to my myself.

A couple of days before I had come across an add in a restaurant advertising a yoga retreat in the Red Sea. It was half a week in the Desert, and half a week by the sea. It seemed absolutely perfect to me. A mixture of sun, together with the solitude that only the desert can provide. Let me tell ya, it did not disappoint. Having one week to catch up with my dear friend, to share my life and get to know hers again, was like having home made bread cooked every day for my soul.

I am back now. I will soon blog about more details, but for the time being let me tell you, confess, I did not come back a super mom. A couple of days in I had a cold (probably as a result of the shock of coming back to northern European weather), and the night before leaving I spent it holding tight to the toilet, getting over some food poisoning. But you know what? not only was it worth it, but I deserved it. I would not have taken so long to fulfill my promise to anyone else. And I do feel better, and stronger, and just that much wiser, if only because I pulled this off.

Haiti on my mind

So this week it is all about Haiti. I first read about it in my pre going to bed 2am last email check up (sad but true). As with all tragedies, it is very difficult to really grasp the enormity of what has happened, and it is the details that make it come home.

I don’t have a long history with Haiti. As a matter of fact, I have never set foot in Haiti, but I was in charge of covering it from the UNICEF HQ for a few years, so I am familiar with its history, the devastation that continuous corrupt governments have brought on its people, its lawlessness, its yearly affront from nature in the form of floods and hurricanes. I was recently thinking again about Haiti because some friends of ours, Europeans of more or less the same age, with two young kids, 2 and 4, more or less the same age as ours, had decided to move there. This never came across as a good idea to me.

I continue to work in conflict countries and with children. The cause is close to my heart and to what I believe and hope can make a difference for a better world, albeit completely aware that the impact that I can have is minute, like providing a devastated beach with a handful of clean white sand. But this is what I believe in, and this is what I choose to do with my life.

Since my children were born I have tried to protect them from my lifestyle. Based in the Netherlands, they live in European luxury and security, while my husband and I travel back and forth to less fortunate parts of the world.

Of course, no one could have predicted this was going to happen. And the irony is that something like this can happen almost anywhere, for as much as you can predict floods and hurricanes in Haiti, there is no history of sysmic movement.

My friends are fine. They were in Miami at the time of the quake, family in full. Another friend had just come back from visiting her boyfriend. They too were spared. But it is through their eyes that I am somewhat able to grasp the magnitude of the disaster. It is through their posts, their tweets, their desperation to know the whereabouts of their friends and colleagues, their struggles to come to terms with how close they were to disaster, how they too could have easily been another sad statistic in this story (http://haititales.wordpress.com ). As they struggle with homelessness, uncertain futures, and the guilt of both having been spared, and worrying about what to others would seem like a best case scenario. Struggling to see how they can make a difference.

As always, life goes one, in spite of the fact that for some, this week, has ended life as they know it. That this week, in their narrative, will forever be dark and desperate. The magnitude of their pain is something that I cannot understand, and hope that I never will.

We watch on, reading the news that drip out, fearing that lawlessness will lead to hell on earth for those who have already suffered too much, so much more than their fair share.

My heart goes out to them, in the hope that the Buddist and other religious teaching are right. That they will someday see their loved ones again. That this tragedy has meaning at some higher level, and not that they all died and suffered in vain.

Alternative theater festival, final poster

This is the one they decided on. If you look closely the poster in the garbage is the one from the festival, which has another poster in the garbage from the festival, and so on ....

It was a lot of work - working with broken glass and mixing colour with B/W, a lot of stuff had to be photoshopped out....not sure it shows!

alternative theater festival

a recent comission was to come up with an image for an alternative theater festival in the south of Spain. I liked this because it was a bit of a nonesense "escher" kind of thing.

on staying sane and other mysteries of motherhood

My mother likes to say that mother hood is not a sprint sport, but a marathon. She says this so that we try to think long term. So that we try not to get too overwhelmed on the bad days. But sometimes, knowing that this will never end (ok, it will, just not in then next 25 years or so), is its own source of stress.

I quit my job because I wanted to be present in my children’s lives. So when I have a bad mommy day, the guilt piles on. There are days when this “job” is so rewarding. When it feels so right. When you are so glad to be able to have the time, the mental space and the freedom and flexibility. But then there are days when you just feel like a total fake. I’m not working. I’m not earning my keep. And I’m also not being a good mother.

So what is a good mother? Hell if I know. How much patience makes for a good mother, how much is spoiling, how much is neglect? These are the questions I struggle with every day. There is no answer out there. As an intellectual I opt for reading. During the first years I read every book in sight. Recently, I have gone back to reading novels and books on things that are about me and what I do. So again comes the guilt. I’m not doing my job right.

I’ve recently decided to divide my time in three: 33% for being a mommy, 33% for paid and recognised work, and the last 33% to write my book and take my photos. There is of course the flaw that there is not time designated there for my partner. Maybe I could sneak him in the first bit as “dada” but the truth is that I use a lot of the time for myself as well. That is another one of the problems.

I am a relatively independent person and somewhat of a loner. At least I used to be, before I would have company even to go to the toilet. (although I put my foot down at pooping in company, no matter how good that company is). So when the kids go to bed, and after dinner with my husband, the only time of the day we have together, the house becomes quiet, everyone is in bed, and my castle is once again my kingdom.

It doesn’t matter how tired I am, I am unable to give this time up. It is MY time, alone, when nobody questions what I am doing, what I am eating, its just me and the silence. I am able to stretch this time quite a bit, into the early hours. Sometimes I get some work done, but the truth is that usually I am too tired to be of any use, so I turn the TV on, and watch crap, and I love watching this crap. And I really savour these moments. Except, then the wake up call arrives between 5 and 6 am. Early rise, assuming nobody got sick or missed mommy during the night. One or two midnight awakenings are a norm, so in short, after a few years of this, I am a wreck. I am so tired I cant seem to get anything done day or night. Which makes for a pretty bad mommy and a pretty bad artist, the only thing that gets done is paid work. I guess just like society, I value that more. Maybe not value, but clearly, I respect it more. There is a deadline, there are consequence if you are not ready, not done in time. So it gets done. Everything else can wait. The kids always get their fair share too. It just never feels like its enough because they always want more. Actually, I am pretty sure that the more time I spend with them the more the cry (literally) for more.

So here I am, trying to be good at some thing, trying to focus my life again. To get back on track.

Khartoum, The Sudan

July 5 2009,

A sand storm makes the windows whistle loudly. Even inside the apartment my eyes get full of dust if I stand too close to a window. You can look straight at the sun, the red sky and a perfectly round white ball stares back. People walk in the streets below while the trees shake. It is 40 degrees, sunny and dusty in Khartoum.