4 a.m.

It is this time of night when my camera finds it hard to get things in focus but my head is clear. There is a big ship on the horizon, bright lights, people floating over the ocean. I sit inside the spaceship, the round building from where I’ve been observing the day ending and starting. The seagulls are out already and the first blackbirds are singing.

Earlier on, around 3, when the hour of the wolf was starting, I walked to the sea. I realised I’ve never walked to the sea in the night. The sky was cloudy but in the start of summer, just after midsummer (and in the words time gets mixed up, the middle is when the summer starts) the nights are light and they make my thoughts light. The sea was a dark blue, as dark as the sky and the waves carried the light of the houses on the right side of the beach into my direction. Bats were flying around my head as I sat on the rocks. In the far right there were still traces of the sun, the edge of the sky a pale pink and yellow. The sun never really leaves here these days.

My silent witness had disappeared. The one-eyed man who sat on the edge of the field staring up at the sky has vanished. The chair he has been sitting on is still there and some left over bits of his skin, his hard skull. I wonder if the kids took him apart or if the big amounts of rain dissolved him.

My companions have left as well. Yesterday they all went. Joakim, the king of the fishing pond, the mad professor. Therese, my fellow hunter, the dreamer who talked to jellyfish. Judit who has been slowly turning rough wool into beautiful wearable objects. Balint who captured our sounds when we were loud and made us silent when we were listening to his magic noises. Valeria who moved inbetween us, who moved us. Some of them are home by now, telling a daughter about gracious see-through creatures, a girlfriend about hundreds of blue fragile spheres, others are still on the road, laughing with friends, dreaming about what will come, waiting for an airplane to take them home.

I am still here. The one who is always leaving has stayed. It won’t be staying for long, but for now I stay. And I sit inside the silent spaceship and look a the sea and my thoughts take me back and forth.

the same sea always

5 am, the day draws its first lines

Dragon memories

Today I remembered the dragon Aiden drew on my father’s coffin shortly before christmas last year.

It is Aiden’s birthday today, my father's oldest grandson, he turned eight.

It is also my father’s birthday, he was born on the first day of summer 64 years ago.

He will never be older than 63 though.

When I started a new life in Barcelona this year I thought about getting Aiden’s dragon tattooed on my back, as the last of my father’s gifts to me. Only hours before my father died my mother gave me an envelope with money for my birthday that had been three months earlier but I hadn’t celebrated with them. We had originally planned to meet for a family dinner that same afternoon, the afternoon after the night I was rushed to the hospital at the other end of the Netherlands. And we did share a meal together that afternoon, kindly supplied by the nurses who kept an eye on my unconscious father. My mother wanted to make sure I received the gift in his presence, that I received it like I was supposed to receive it, being together, sharing food, drinking coffee. Being alive. And at that moment we all believed he would live. I believed he would live. But I saw he was dying.

The difference can be subtle thought. We are all dying in a way. And there is nothing that frightens us more. At least as adults. For children, dragons might be more real than death.

When I was Aiden’s age I had my own dragon.

It was living in the attic of our house.

At night, before I went to sleep, I always made sure the hatch was closed well.

The dark square in the ceiling frightened me, intrigued me.

At daytime I loved spending time up there, surrounded by books and dusty things.

The dragon was never there in daytime.

Today, June 21, the first day of summer, I divide my time inbetween being in my own thoughts and being in my new and old friends’ energy.

I spend time with my family in my head.

Real time with my partners in crime here, five beautiful artists I really enjoy working with.

Time inbetween with my friends in the virtual world.

Lots of time with myself, lonely time.

Earlier on I saw a blogpost on my facebook feed posted by a Barcelona friend.

It quotes Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” and talks about lonesomeness and solitude.

I love those letters and they give me solace and advice often.

There is a dragon in one of the letters too, in my favorite one, the eighth letter he wrote in Fladie, Sweden, where I started a walk one day, without knowing that Rilke had been there, writing his letter about sadness, where I arrived at my temporary home in the evening after my Fladie walk and collected the book, Rilke’s book, I had unknowningly ordered from the library across my house. I opened it and searched for my favorite letter and only then discovered it had been written right there. It says:

“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

There are no dragons here, I don’t believe in dragons anymore but earlier today Joakim found a snake in the middle of the hall leading to the music room. It scared us but it also excited us. Therese said it might be poisenous and we observed it, we tried to find a snake book in the library and searched for images online. We discovered it was a grass snake, growing up to 150 cm, coloured in a shade of green with short black vertical bars and spots running across its sides, a white collar behind its head. They are often found near water and are harmless to humans.

We decided to catch it and armed ourselves with the objects we had used for our midsummer rituals, the fishing rod with the funny saw blade, the lonely pink shoe we had found on the sidewalk, the left over water balloon from our midsummer battle, the plastic box we use to keep jellyfish in, the hunting knife I never used for hunting. We were like kids.

When we came down the snake was gone and we searched the closets and found it hidden inbetween a stack of mattresses. It slipped away, we chased it and cautiously caught it. We brought it outside and marvelled at how graciously and swiftly it disappeared into the bushes.

Today is a beautiful day. A sad day, a happy day. A day to stare at the sea and smile and be fearless.

a light world

midsummer
dancing on the edge of the world on golden shoes
the horizon tilted

measuring my dreams

i fell asleep in our installation last night
on a table that is a shelter
you can sit under it and open the blinds
you can lie on top of it and someboy might come and measure the lines of your body
write them down on paper, like i wrote the measurements of my small house on my body

when i woke up this morning, the straight line of the table, its flat surface, was still in my lower back
i could feel it, i couldn’t bend my back

i walked the lines of the dance floor valeria created
a floor within a floor
we are not allowed to wear our shoes inside
i like to walk on the border barefeet
on both sides there are traces of people who walked on these floors before
next to valeria’s lines there is the line of balint’s cables
they connect the machines that catch the soundwaves and turn them into new ones
i walked around and around in squares until my fingers could touch my toes again
until my thoughts shaped circles

and when i went outside
the horizon threw out a line and caught my eyes

tasting the sea