What is a nomad?

I was sitting on a bench in my Dutch suit in a Spanish city, on a Catalan square, watching two tiny kids playing football with a small ball made out of aluminium paper while an old man on a bench on the opposite side was singing a song. I read in my notebook, notes I made in Berlin recently during a workshop about Feldenkrais and walking. I had written down a line one of the German speakers quoted during a lecture, it was a quote from the Belgium choreographer and dancer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker: "my walking is my dancing". I like that quote, that idea.

I broused through my notebook and a small bag with salt fell out. I picked up a few of them at a hostel in the Ruhr Area when I was on a long walk last year, thinking they might come in handy. I hid them in my notebook. This was the last one left. When I came back home after that walk an English publisher, who had asked me if I would consider writing a book about my walking, suggested salt as a possible red thread in my writing. Salt as in Salzburg, the city in Austria close to where I had landed after my long walk and where I had spent ten days with 180 artists in a former salt factory. Salzburg, the region where one of my permaculture heroes lives and works, Sepp Holzer. I watched a video about him earlier today, the Agro Rebel, in which he explains how he was just farming the way he thought made most sense, listening to and looking at nature. Doing things everybody thought would be impossible like growing citrus fruits high up in the mountains. How at some point people told him that what he was doing was permaculture and how he turned from somebody people considered a crazy guy into one of the greatest permaculturists in the world. 

While watching it a question landed in my inbox. A friend who lives in Romania wondered about a future project I might embark on, travelling through northern Italy and the Balkan countries. She asked “What is a nomad?” and I didn’t know what to answer straight away. But I guess this might be one answer to her question. 

Feeling at home on a bench in a strange city. Moving through a handful of countries in words. Not living anywhere. Living everywhere. 

now here

i am mainly writing here at the moment: www.asoftarmour6.blogspot.com

Flying lesson

I walked passed the outer wall of Park Güell, high up on the other side two young boys leaned over the stone fence. They shouted something at me in Spanish. I saw what they were meaning. On the sidewalk a few meters in front of my feet the red lid of a sandwich box was lying. Next to it a blue paper airplane.

I picked up the lid and tried to throw it up like a frisbee. The second try was succesful. The boys cheered and pointed down once more.

I picked up the airplane, gave it a try but this was much harder. Every time I tried and failed the boys shouted “uno mas!”, one more time! I sharpened the airplane’s nose, tried from far away, from close by, almost flew it into their hands one time, but it was too difficult and I told them “uno mas!” meaning “the last time!”. I failed, gave it one final final last try and flew it over the wall. The boys thanked me in English. I walked away but when I turned around I saw the boy with the airplane in a launching position, about to throw it down again. His mother showed up and shouted something at them. They all walked away.

A few minutes later I suddenly heard them behind me. The two boys were too busy playing and fighting to recognise me. They jumped passed me, the red lid and the blue airplane in their hands, doing some sort of karate exercise. I looked at them, they ran off and I caught the airplane boy in the act of flying himself, both feet lifted from the ground, floating in the air.

Today's view

Rolling up my walks

Day 1 (the heart of the sphere), Day 3 (there was music), Day 4 (I tied a tie)

Every day while walking I collect everything you can tie together. In the evening I roll it up in the order in which I found it. The ball is getting bigger every day

Flying lesson

Wings

We have

a map of the universe

for microbes,

we have

a map of a microbe

for the universe

We have

a Grand Master of chess

made of electronic circuits.

But above all

we have

the ability

to sort peas,

to cup water in our hands,

to seek

the right screw

under the sofa

for hours

This

gives us

wings.

- Miroslav Holub

One of the first things I did after arriving here was finding out where they sell English books. Today I went to the Hibernian. I fell in love with the poems of an internationally distinguished scientist (imunologist) who was also Czechoslovakia’s most lively and experimental poet. On my way home, reading, I bumped into this lady.

Flying lesson

With all this newness, a new city, a new language, new people, I sometimes forget about the newness of my father’s absence. I sometimes forget he isn’t simply not here, but he is not anywhere. He is dead. Four weeks already. Time flies. If anything flies, it is time.
But when I think about other things during the day, he is there at night. Last night I dreamt I was visiting my parents. It was a house and a garden I had never seen before. My father was burning things in a metal drum. I figured it would be rubbish, his old stuff, but when I looked in the fire I saw he was burning my shoes. Some old pairs, but I also saw a new pair of boots I had never worn.

I found a piece of the puzzle

Losing things

There’s something about losing things

about how you deal with the loss

how you slowly let go while you are still in the process of searching for  it

how you measure the loss, compare it with other things you lost

and realise there are far more serious losses

and that a camera can be replaced easily

no worries

I only had it for four months, I loved it

a Canon G16, a spare battery and 32 Gb SD card in the camera bag

I bought it in Vienna, after my other camera had been dropped of a cliff by accident during a performance I was in, it was quite a spectacular event and the improvised action that led to my camera flying through the air made a lot of sense

Actually I had planned to write about other things today

about how I had found my favorite square in the city already

how I had crossed it yesterday, saw a cafe in the sun but couldn’t find an empty chair

and how today I returned there for a coffee, sunbathed, circled the square, took a flyer from “Bateau Lune”, Moon Boat where the motto above the door says “Don’t forget to play.”

I passed the bar on the corner, bought white and blue thread in one of those shops I love, the ones in which you can buy anything you need, metal hooks and clamps, measuring devices, paper, masks, wooden boxes, fake swords. I left the square, wandered on, send a text message to a friend asking him what would be a good place to meet later on for a drink, not knowing anything about this city. He wrote to me 17.30, Placa de la Virreina. I searched my map. I walked to the square. It was the same one. Of course.

We talked about loss, about losing people, about how to move through your life in the best way possible. We sat on a bench first, then moved into a cafe, drank wine, then walked to another cafe, drank more wine. We left. We walked home. In a way it wasn’t a surprise that we were almost neighbours, only three streets seperating us.

I entered the gallery, my new home, put my bag on the bed, opened it. Didn’t see my camera. Went out again. Retraced my steps. The bench. Nothing. The cafe. Nothing. The other cafe.

There’s something about losing things

the extreme joy you feel when you find what you thought might be lost forever

the way you smile when that happens

the way you walk afterwards

The stones in the street made me think of small autumn leaves

I took a photo

Losing things

There’s something about losing things

about how you deal with the loss

how you slowly let go while you are still in the process of searching for  it

how you measure the loss, compare it with other things you lost

and realise there are far more serious losses

and that a camera can be replaced easily

no worries

I only had it for four months, I loved it

a Canon G16, a spare battery and 32 Gb SD card in the camera bag

I bought it in Vienna, after my other camera had been dropped of a cliff by accident during a performance I was in, it was quite a spectacular event and the improvised action that led to my camera flying through the air made a lot of sense

Actually I had planned to write about other things today

about how I had found my favorite square in the city already

how I had crossed it yesterday, saw a cafe in the sun but couldn’t find an empty chair

and how today I returned there for a coffee, sunbathed, circled the square, took a flyer from “Bateau Lune”, Moon Boat where the motto above the door says “Don’t forget to play.”

I passed the bar on the corner, bought white and blue thread in one of those shops I love, the ones in which you can buy anything you need, metal hooks and clamps, measuring devices, paper, masks, wooden boxes, fake swords. I left the square, wandered on, send a text message to a friend asking him what would be a good place to meet later on for a drink, not knowing anything about this city. He wrote to me 17.30, Placa de la Virreina. I searched my map. I walked to the square. It was the same one. Of course.

We talked about loss, about losing people, about how to move through your life in the best way possible. We sat on a bench first, then moved into a cafe, drank wine, then walked to another cafe, drank more wine. We left. We walked home. In a way it wasn’t a surprise that we were almost neighbours, only three streets seperating us.

I entered the gallery, my new home, put my bag on the bed, opened it. Didn’t see my camera. Went out again. Retraced my steps. The bench. Nothing. The cafe. Nothing. The other cafe.

There’s something about losing things

the extreme joy you feel when you find what you thought might be lost forever

the way you smile when that happens

the way you walk afterwards

The stones in the street made me think of small autumn leaves

I took a photo

Old luck

the ultimate exercise in being here

Mischa, Tirza, Mara and Gerard, their grandfather

The taste of memory

The Sunday after Christmas I visited my frozen father. He didn’t say much. It was cold outside. Afterwards I visited my mother. She asked if I could kill the young roosters. She didn’t know how to do it. My brothers in law weren’t keen on doing it.

I killed animals before. But only small ones in pain. I said yes. Next week. It would take time to catch them.

I drove home. I went to the supermarket to buy groceries for my last meal in the old year. I bought a steak. I usually don’t eat meat.
I am not sure, but I think that is what he would have bought. He loved his meat. And I love the taste of meat too. The steak was delicious.

The beat of my father’s heart. The most beautiful thing I felt in the last year. We counted the last beats without counting. The saddest thing I felt in the last year. In 42 years.

The tastiest thing? Meat again. A sausage. Cut in pieces and rearranged by new friends into the age I had turned that day. 42. In the middle of the night after a party, in a sausage stall along the road across the former salt factory where we worked on an art project. A sausage in memory of my grandmother who used to give me one in the shape of my age when I was a kid.

Old light

This morning I saw a photo on Facebook of the “new” arriving in Barcelona. It was pale blue, pink, a light yellow.

For a moment I thought I was stuck in the old, not being there, having cancelled my flight on the last-but-one day of the old year.

I saw a photo of the new arriving in Barcelona. The sun was about to rise over the city. Under the blue, the pink, the yellow, there was a dark purple, a deep greyish blue, a bottomless black.

The new had just arrived. It was everywhere. In every colour.

“If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.” (Rilke)

I saw a photo of the new arriving in Barcelona. I saw the pink, the black, the yellow, the grey, the blue in many shades, I saw it in every colour. 

I saw the old. It was invisible. It was everywhere. In pale blue, in pink, in the brightest yellow.

And I suddenly remembered seeing fireworks the last time I arrived in Barcelona. For no reason. It was October, it was warm, the city was lying at my feet and there it was. It was beautiful.

But not as beautiful as the stars I saw in dark nights later on elsewhere in Spain. Old light, fireworks which travelled years to reach our eyes. 

 

(photo: October 5, 2014 - Barcelona)