Night drive

Fun with camera, car, and drizzle, without whipers

Eric lafforgue for a third time

Eric Lafforgue is back from a trip to Tanzania. He always manages to make wonderful images, with both great colors and subjects. What a lovely smile on this kid.



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/3311277978/sizes/o/ )

Eric's website is here: http://www.ericlafforgue.com/

Logocal

A big plus of having done a competition is that i get to drink coffee again. This cup in Germany had a really good logo -but the cup's ear was a little too brittle looking, so i didn't steal it.

The Twilight Calzone and other odd German products

One of the charms of driving through Germany, besides travelling at lightspeed, is the bizarness of some of the products you find in their tank shops. This thing just looks massively unappealing:



And this popsicle seems to be meant to pick your nose -or some other orifice- with:



It somehow makes a little sense to call a wine after Little Red Riding Hood -red wine, anyway. "Grandma, what big bottles you have!"

And William dances with tigers

William Winram is a legend in the making; not only is he the deepest man in the no fins category on the American Continent and the first to swim through the arch without fins, he also excels in the pool, but more importantly, he's pleasantly deranged, and perhaps even better, he's a true sharkitarian. Is that a word? It should be. He dedicates much of his time and efforts to shark conservation and raising awareness that these creatures are being ruthlessly annihilated, simply because they have a bad image and the public doesn't see a problem with killing a 'killer'. William is here to prove you can play with these creatures, as evidenced by these wonderful pictures by Frederic Buyle:


http://www.nektos.net/gallery/aliwaltigersharks/


William said that the shark in that last picture kept coming back to be petted. Notice how her eyes seem to have the slight squint of pleasure?

More on William on his webiste

More on Frederic Buyle on his website and his pictures

The blue

Got a pool competition this weekend, but i'd really like to be back in the somewhat deeper blue



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elunandy/3279908553/ )

On the cutting edge of culinary arts

Art meets red cabbage meets knive meets cutting board meets photoshop

Promenade

Used to love just sitting on these benches on the Brooklyn promenade, enjoying the view of Manhattan



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/61123283@N00/867896820/sizes/l/ )

Lacrima di Lago

This is the 1937 Talbot Lago T150, the teardrop coupe.



(found here: http://www.petersen.org/images/Exhibitimages/Talbot_Lago_1937_T150_SS.jpg )

Picketing again

The lady Moth protests too much, methinks

Caution vs. Wind, Part II

I threw caution to the wind.
The wind didn't want it, and threw it back.
Of course, i wasn't looking, having thrown it to the wind, so caution hit me right in the face.
Gotta keep an eye on caution.

Job and the Hypothesis of the expanding heart

Yesterday, my sister had her third child, Jacobus Lambertus Wouter, we call him Job. He's another perfect baby, 7 pounds, 10 long vingers, lots of dark hair. As i was melting watching him, a hypothesis that had been floating around in me came back to the surface: i think when we see babies, we melt to facilitate the place they will take into our hearts. It is without any effort that we welcome them in our heart and that we love them without loving anyone around us any less. I find it remarkable how stretchy our hearts are and i think the melting helps - like a warm-up. I think we see the innocent and helpless perfection of a baby, and especially when it's family, we are in turn helpless to melt and allow the baby room in our hearts.

When my sister's first, Boet, was born, i was amazed at how quickly he became part of the family. He's not yet 5 and i can't imagine a life without him. His sister Wybine is not yet 3 and irrevocably part of who we are as a family, pretty much since day one. For my sister, they must have been part of the family even longer. The strange thing is, it feels like they always been there, their place with us is that familiar. Our hearts have grown to make room for them and there seems to be no end to how far it can expand further.

So i've melted for this beautiful boy. I've watched him sleep and simply by continuing to breathe he made me incredibly happy. Every move he makes and hiccup he has are works of art. Before i've again coagulated partially he'll be family and it will be unimaginable that he was not here a while back. I have no clue who he is, all i know is that he's part of part of us, and part of me.

Welcome to the world, Job; may your heart melt many times.

Framed by clouds

Shot this yesterday, and it framed itself -though another crop with less negative space at the bottom might work better

A close one

(original found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashok_menon/3274449428/sizes/o/ )

no puddle

It took me a bit to see what this was; at first i thought it was a reflection in a puddle. Strange how i didn't instantly recognize the combination of themes in my life: orange, dog, sky. Must be cause i'm Dutch and the sight of mountains throws my brain off.



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cptspock/3259303519/sizes/l/ )

Forrest house

Taking tree house to new dimensions



This is the Alnwick Gardens treehouse, which apparently includes a couple of bridges, wobbly, and open fire place in the middle, huge.



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ousby/7726140/sizes/o/ and here: http://constructionblog.org/tag/treehouse )

Treehouse

That's it, i'm moving. Who's coming with?



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melolou/486498997/sizes/o/ )

Project Ocean Quest

We're lucky to already have a second documentary featuring freediving announced this year. This is Frederic Buyle's endeavour,

Project Ocean Quest

which looks stunning.

Greetings from Holland

where the weather is ever so lovely

C'est Cibelle

It's not often that i'm jealous, but when i heard the first line of this song, i wished i wrote it. "Lay your head where my heart used to be, on the earth above me." When Tom Waits sings it, you barely hear what he's talking about, cause he's doing his usual barking, but this is Cibelle's version, and i have yet to stop listening to it. It has been on almost all my playlists of the last year

Orange'a gonna play?

Tarzan my ass



(found here: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=256698817&size=large&posted=1 )

skyscraper or cloudtickler

From one point of view, the lines of this building seemed to merge with the lines of these clouds



But viewed from another angle, the two contrasted each other

cloud-octopus

It's not often that you see a cloud-octopus, and when you do, it's hard to capture them

Q needed

Why does James Bond type shit always look so clumsy and dumb in real life? The concept is quite cool, building a camera into a scuba-mask, but you end up swimming with a city-scape on your head:



And the specs are pretty poor, too. Then again, might be good for giving marine life laughing fits.

(found here: http://www.liquidimageco.com/ )

No bull

This guy's freediving with bull sharks, known to be a tad curious and have a bit of an appetite for, well, anything. Another cool things Bulls can do is survive in sweet water, so they occasionally swim up rivers. I've swam with sharks, but am not sure if i'd have the balls to swim with bulls.




(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84398391@N00/3257722622/sizes/l/ )

What's French for 'orca'?

This is Orca for French:



(found here: http://photomat.deviantart.com/art/Orca-kiss-55024164 )

Greener on this side

I've never seen my backyard looking as green as it did this morning. It was the way the light hit it -and the lack of snow. That's not just a rather lame joke, i really do think grass is greener after it's been covered in snow. The cold must do something to the chloroplasts in the cells that makes them 'fresh' again, so to speak.



By the way, my backyard is suspiciously soft. As you can see, i share it with some moles, and i suspect if i jump around on the grass, i'll pay them an unexpected visit. But the grass does invite such jumping, as it is rather delicious on the soles, and the ground is so airy and bouncy that i might have to make acquaintance with my subterranean neighbours. Soles meet moles.

The banjo lesson

In the wake of last monday's sadness and melancholy, here's a painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, of a father and his son



(found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_The_Banjo_Lesson.jpg )

eight kisses

When i was 19 i dove with an octopus. It approached us and stuck around for a few minutes, as curious about us as we were about it. After a while, it was in my hands and i was surprised at how pleasant the feel of this animal was, how supple and soft. When it was time for it to leave, it signaled so by suddenly changing color, and it took off. Haven't eaten calamari since.



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fathomthis/228866323/sizes/o/ )

Dobercar

Now that i have a car, the reality of owning a dog is a step closer, which makes the Doberman obsession flare up again, and this stubborn looking pup is only making things worse



(found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/khouryp23/1339737474/sizes/o/ )

Cup'o'Rain Man

I might be a little autistic; even though the lecture they organised in Belgium yesterday in my father's honor was interesting and complicated (about Husserl and phenomenology -which i can't even pronounce, let alone comprehend), i was distracted by my fascination for this coffee cup. It has great great lines and if i hadn't been a guest of honor and if i didn't have to come back there every year, i would have stolen it.

Cornelis Verhoeven 2-2-1928 6-11-2001

My dad would have turned 81 today. The world is a poorer place without him -even though he left it many pearls. Here's one of them.

Love

‘Love’ has become, no matter how humble in its origin -for originally the word does not aim much higher than ‘desire’- far too big a word, with which after centuries of abuse hardly anything serious can be done. Who uses it lightly, presents himself as a
dimwit. Really it’s deplorable, that this word has become laughable and that ‘I love you’ has started to mostly resemble a hollow declamation. Whoever wants to say anything in connection to love, has to say something small and lean; and it preferably has to sneak in through a side-entrance to still be believable in a world of show-offy inflation. Solely as a side issue can love survive, for the main issues have all already choked on emphasis and imitation. The vulnerability that ‘love’ and other words for affection must once have had has disappeared completely in noisy kitsch, as far as it hadn’t been already walzed down under the weight of a moralism that wants to replace all the blessings of vulnerability with the certainties of duty and regulations. For also as a duty and a commandement love seems to be chanceless. Only the appearance of it can be prescribed.

The most beautiful, most elementary and most touching among the endless lot that has been said about love is, to my feeling, the dry defiinition by Spinoza, translated as: “Love is happiness, accompanied by the idea of an external cause”. In this description it boils down that love, in its most essential form, is a happiness, arroused by the existence of someone else who is regarded as both the source and the subject of it. The description is so elementary and at the same time so touching because it is minimal and stripped of all noise and all fatty noblicity. Love in the Ethics of Spinoza is not a a commandment or an expensive duty we fulfill, perhaps against our will and as an offer; it is also not a power that spins a slimey thread around the other and dominates, but a simple happiness because of the pure fact that the other is there. For example, people love their children, and them maybe the very most, because they are glad those exist, just the way they are. There’s nothing possesive in the love and loving according to Spinoza. On further consideration, the minimum he describes is at the same time the highest and most altruistic level that affection can reach, almost devinely one-sided.

Only the difficulty is again, that this all too can be easily repeated purely verbally and can be forged. Even the happiness, that is the elementary basis of love with Spinoza, can, once it has been integrated into the pressing packet of duties and exaggerations, be easily imitated and be thrown into a window display as an infectious smile. There probably is on no terrain as much annoying fake and forgery as right here, on the ground of naivity itself, one of the few things of which only the authenticity is worth something and should have meaning. Of course Spinoza did not mean that happiness is mandatory or that it should be produced artificially, but that it, when it is there and somebody catches himself -so to speak- involuntarily being happy, it turns itself as a warm affection towards its source in the other, outside of the circle of all we can decide over. It discovers itself as a form of gratitude for the existence of that other one and it cannot be more, for this is the highest.

~ Cornelis Verhoeven

Light, filtered and non-

This glass entrance to a parking garage captured the light in a playful way