The old and the new

 
“I hope 2017 will bring you beautiful things” I wrote to a friend on the first evening of the new year and he answered “2017 will be what we make of it”.

Earlier that new year’s day, when I was walking home through the city I chose to live in for no other reason than that it makes me smile to wake up in it under a blue sky, I found the first present of the year (not counting the wonderful start with old and new friends of course) lying on the side walk. It was covered in dirt and maybe that is why it was thrown out but I could see the beauty of it through the layer of filth.

First rough cleaning revealed the hidden patterns and after some love and care I will be able to house my collection of gifted, bought and orphaned single cups and glasses on it, among them a delicate moon bowl made by an artist who went on a journey to deliver it to me personally, a golden rimmed cup and saucer I found in the trash and reminds me of a special person, a Double Phoenix Japanese cup which was a birthday present from a dear friend, a ceramic cup I bought from an artist who’s work I like a lot and two orphaned pieces I picked up from the street, an engraved glass and a small cup depicting a house I wouldn’t mind living in.

2017 already brought me beautiful things and I will make it a year I feel at home in. A new year where the newness will be in looking at old things with new eyes. In cherishing old connections and making new ones. A year of staying and sinking in before undoubtedly there will be leaving and wandering once more. A year of using this new old tray and serve coffee and tea and wine and whisky to friends and strangers as often as possible.

Our life is what we make of it but we make it with the things and people we find on our paths. And the most interesting finds are the ones that seem to be plain or unattractive even but show a hidden beauty buried under layers of proper or improper use, layers of history and memories and traces left by others.

Nothing is really new. Or maybe everything is new all the time because we look at it from a changed perspective and a different constellation every moment. And of course this thought isn’t very new either. Marcel Proust already said it far more eloquently: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” It makes me realise that although my eyesight is getting worse, I start to see better through the years. It must be the continuing newness of getting older.

Catching the last light of 2016

Feeling inside-out

My favorite time of day when the sky turns a glorious blue. The birds are singing their final song outside in the trees. It is new moon tonight but my home comes with a rare double full moon feeling every evening.

Fixing a memory

When I was very small and very sick my father came home one day with a present. I loved the music box with the dancing ballerina and the beautiful tune she was dancing to. I kept my treasures in the box, medals and souvenirs and secret notes. When I got older and moved out of my parents’ house the music box moved with me. It didn’t work anymore and I didn’t change the content but every time I packed my bags and started a new life in a new city it moved with me.

I didn’t take it to Barcelona, the city I started living in occasionally almost two years ago. A city where I started dancing, I’d never really done that before. Sometimes I wondered if it was a way to deal with the sadness of leaving, of saying goodbye forever.

Today, back in Amsterdam in my old room in the apartment where I don’t live anymore but my things are still kept safe, my eyes fell on the music box. I opened it and the ballerina was on her back on the bottom. I decided to fix the box. Like my father would have, the man who could make and repair everything.

It took a little bit of effort but in no time the ballerina was back on her feet, swirling around on that tune I thought I’d forgotten. But I hadn’t.

Any day

My orthomanual therapist, who is very good and very successful and treats many patients every day, had forgotten what the cause of my physical problems was. He looked at his notes, saw that in summer he had moved 10 vertebrae back in the proper position and asked “Did you have an accident before you came?” I told him I was an artist who had stretched her limits too far and I had walked for too long and carried too much. I told him I walked across countries to be in the world slowly and see what happens if you live your life differently. He smiled and said:”Ah, it is your hobby!”

It isn’t the first time I hear that. People think making art is fun, you play around, create some beautiful things and when you travel a lot like I do they see it as some sort of eternal holiday even. I said “No, it isn’t my hobby, it is my profession, my dedication”. He said: “But don’t you like doing it, isn’t it pleasurable?” I wanted to tell him to read his notes again and think it through but usually with people who use the word “hobby” it is better to move on in the conversation as quick as possible. Furthermore I pay € 120,- for 15 minutes so I rather be on the table upside down having my neck vertebrae being hammered at again than waisting words on something he had no idea about. So I just said “It is the hardest thing I can imagine and I need it more than anything. Life wouldn’t make sense without it and it gives me tremendous joy but if any hobby would only slightly make me go through what making art does to me, I would choose a different hobby immediately.”

While breathing in and out to make it easier and less painful to put some bones back in place, I wondered if it would make a difference if I would earn €400 an hour doing what I do. I guess I will never know for sure but I strongly suspect not. And anyway, there are other things I earn. Better than any money. Well worth to naively but knowingly mistreat your body for. Or your brain. Any day.

new love (Polaroid 180 Land Camera)

looking at the small things to make sense of the big things