Camille's blog

All the ideas presented below are solely mine

[whatcamillethinks]

Feeling of hot sand

How does hot sand feel exactly?

You wouldn’t know unless you’ve felt it. Like I did, when I was still living in South-India. Numerous times, at Aurobeach, I had to make a run for a cool spot, close to the waterline, where the beach sand was just about to dry after waves had broken and retreated. If you ever had the same sensation - in Greece, Spain, Brazil, the US or Belgium (or anywhere else) - that memory is now alive with you. Like my memory of the South-Indian beach near Auroville is with me. 

Do you know how hot coffee tastes? 

You wouldn’t know unless you drank it recently. If your cup of coffee is standing on a table next to you (like with me, right now), you know. And you relish the hot, somewhat bittersweet palatal taste of your coffee on your tongue, numbing your taste buds, just before you swallow. And then, the delightful aftertaste. 

You only know if you’ve been there, done that. 

And because beaches cool off during the night and coffee gets cold even faster, you need to go back, do it again. And again. Because you like the experience, the feeling, the taste ..

And when you can’t (you’re in the middle of a country with no beaches or your local store has run out of coffee), you feel sad. You miss the feeling of hot sand, the taste of coffee. 

Like I do.

Well, my relationship with coffee is a lucky one, as my local store never runs out of coffee and - like Coke - you can get coffee virtually anywhere in the world (bad luck when I hit a place where there’s only coffee and no coffee milk, as I need an abundance of the latter to embellish the taste of the former). 

I live in Holland and yeah, we’ve got beaches alright. 

Trouble only is that on the rare occasion that our beach sand is hot, there’s no place left to feel it, as the beaches will already be covered with people like flees on a street dog even before I have finished my morning coffee .. that much for rekindling my experience in India here in Holland ... 

Not.

My point here is: for an experience to enjoy, you need to be able to repeat it. If not, the experience (back then) becomes a bittersweet memory. Kind a like my coffee when there’s no milk in it. Which makes me crave (for milk) and not stay in the moment to enjoy my coffee.

Or the hot beach sand.

[whatcamillethinks]

Touch Of A Skirt

There is something special about the touch of a skirt worn in South-India, such as this one, being part of a so called ‘half saree’. The cloth is both rugged, somewhat unrefined and yet velvety. And it has a shine that suspects lines of silk in the weft. The colors are often stunningly bright, contrasting - especially in the villages where many a girl has to work outside in the sun on the fields for many hours - with the tanned skin of the wearer. The strong colors of the skirt, sometimes reinforced by a scarf or shawl in a stark contrasting hue, seemingly suggests a desire in the girl to be looked at, observed or even admired. Although I won’t deny that many a girl would love nothing more than an admiring gaze from a trusted relative or even a distant friend, most of the village girls wearing these dresses, sometimes only at festive occasions, do not dress themselves like this to be stared at, but simply because it is part of South-Indian village culture, where poverty is visible in many a shape, but not when it comes to dressing up for an occasion, such as a marriage, a birthday or one of the many village festivals. 

I find it incredibly satisfying when I see a girl dressed in such a ‘rough’ skirt, that lets her hand rest calmly, almost unknowingly graceful, on her knee, decently covered with the dress that easily reaches her ankles and further down. When such as hand is adorned with a gold colored and bright blue bangle, my day has then started just fine.  

And I need no more. 

[whatcamillethinks]

Civilization on the noose

We like to think of ourselves as civilized beings. Or - some fancy hyperboles - as the very best of God’s creation. For our daily life we don’t need to kill each other. Or even convict someone to the death penalty. But we do: every day, someone somewhere is hung, shot or otherwise executed . 

If you ask (almost) anyone how he or she would like to be treated, the answer most likely is ‘kind’ and ‘accepting’. Ask what he or she considers ‘vital to a happy life’, and one of the answers will be ‘that we care for eachother’. Not so difficult to understand, after all, we are only human. 

Then why the killing?

Some reason that this is ‘our animal nature’, a part in our personality that dates back to ‘times immemorial’. We needed to defend ourselves against the destructive forces of nature (read: predators). Now, since we have moved up the food chain, we have become our predator. Man has created a new mortal enemy: himself. And ‘himself’ is intentionally used. Women are seldom in the forefront of men’s intra-species killings. 

“If you want others to be happy, be compassionate. If you want to be happy, be compassionate” 

We are posting this and other peaceful quotes hundreds of times across social media. We state that it is better to make love instead of war. And in the meantime, in our own backyard, we fight, argue and repress. 

What does ‘civilized’ mean anyway, in an age that favors egoism and calls it enlightened self-interest? If not a ‘struggle of all against all’, what then ensures that we get what we want? 

“The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

Milton Friedman

Some, like Milton Friedman, argue that freedom (of will, speech, expression, everything) is the only guarantee that our civilization will develop in the right condition. But man is not the master over his own free will (even though he wants to believe this). His will, as is his total behavior, is governed by his instincts, his impulses. Especially when a person is in a powerful position, this will be to the detriment of many. 

So how do we make this ‘best of futures’? 

By working together while holding ourselves accountable for what we do. And by looking at the results, asking ourselves this question: “Would I want to be treated this way too?” 

[whatcamillethinks]

New first steps

You have probably already heard of the practice of meditative walking. If not, here’s a nice introduction and some advice as to how to go about it. Basically, meditative walking is walking while being conscious of doing so. Every step of the way. Somehow keeping track of who and what is in front of you, helps not to struggle too much with this more active form of meditation. Although I am starting off with all this, my today’s post is not about walking meditation (although I am a bit of a fan). Today’s post is about rekindling your walking. There is a subtle difference, perhaps, with walking meditation. A major one, perhaps, is that I (far from being a guru of any kind) am not going to give you a set of guidelines to follow. I will simply try to put down a few thoughts I am having on this topic. Thoughts that come from experience. 

Here we go.

While I am walking back home, with our dog Rose, I imagine that today is the first day that I am able to walk, after a very long sick bed. Or perhaps - to make the experience even stronger - I imagine that I haven’t been able to walk since birth (bit over the top, but it seems to work for me). Today that aspect of my life, which has defined me for so long (bedridden or convicted to a wheelchair), has totally changed: I can walk! There is (I imagine) nothing in my life’s experience that I can compare it with. It is so unique, that I don’t even have a language to describe what I feel, while I keep putting my next step after step after step .. I (naturally) start to feel exhilarated! Now here’s the catch: let my exhalation carry me away. 

Don’t! (Here’s my one and only advice to you :)

Instead, I try to get my joyous energy ‘back in’ and use it - while keeping a keen eye on the footpath (and Rose) in front of me - to ‘go inward’. I try to become aware of every little sensation that comes with walking (and here’s where ‘walking meditation’ and my experience sort of merge): the space my feet occupy while on the ground and while ‘in flight forward’; the sensation of the soil, the little pebbles, tree roots protruding from under the footpath, frozen winter leaves I am treading on and the occasional litter people left from the night before. I become increasingly beware of the wind, even so subtle, gently brushing my cheeks in an almost incalculable rhythm; the sunlight, entering my eyes and warming the parts of my skin that are exposed; but also the noise of the traffic (not much, thank god) and the remote sounds that testify of human presence (or other dogs, poor Rose!). 

What always baffles me is the short duration of it all, but at the same time the intensity of the experience that I am able to conjure up when ‘going inward’. For me this works out much better than any sitting kind of meditation. As a single parent I am often bound to (over)organize my time such that I can ‘be there’ for my children as well as for my own self. That doesn’t leave much time to ‘sit and be still’. 

Anyway, I hope this experience will somehow be supportive for your own thoughts about getting more out of less, as I have come to call this exercise. 

Walk on!   

[whatcamillethinks]

Honesty and loyalty

Honesty and loyalty. Who doesn’t want to impart these values on their offspring? If only we could present more positive role models to our children! Well, the least we can do to make our kids incorporating our high moral values is ‘walking our talk’. And that’s where we often give mixed messages, to the very children we’d like to follow ‘our clear example of how things are supposed to be’. 

How’s that? 

I’ll give you a live example, right from this morning’s palette! I found myself riding my bicycle to my son’s school, knowing I was about to tell them a lie about why my son wouldn’t attend classes today. In plain English: why he would skip school. If I’d be honest, I would have told them that no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get my son away from his laptop, engaged as he was in ‘getting more professional’ while watching an online tutorial on working with MS Paint, while enhancing a logo that he designed earlier with his (’thank you, tutorial’) upgraded skillset. There was simply no stopping him from finishing what he started until .. it was so damn late that I knew he was going to have a severe problem in getting out of bed the following morning. And so it happened (of course partly or wholly due to my weak dictator-skills in forcing him to go to school even if in a zombie-state). 

So there I was, standing before my son’s class teacher, blatantly devoid of shame, telling her that ‘my son was not feeling well today’, so that ‘I decided to keep him home for today’. 

While I mounted my bicycle again to cycle home, I gave it a deeper thought and concluded that when it comes to being honest (to the school) or loyal (to my son), the latter had won. Again. There’s no parental guide in which ‘experts’ are unanimous about me being right or ‘stupidly’ wrong. 

I guess being a parent leaves you clueless as to what is better or worse. Unless you follow your parental instincts. 

Loyalty: 1

Honesty: 0

[whatcamillethinks]

The Glow Of Being Kind

One time or another we all come across rather compelling photos somewhere on the Internet of a soldier helping a wounded comrade to move away from the battlezone. Or a little child helping another child get up after he stumbled and fell. Today, looking for a suitable photograph to illustrate my post about kindness, I came across this one: a man or a woman offering the photographer a flower. I am going to use this simple photograph as a metaphor for my thinking about kindness in my own life. In this post I will share with you how I experience kindness, both in terms of being or acting kind (and the subtle difference between the two) and in terms of receiving it.  

my name is not important, my act is.

I allow my name, face or even the time when it happened to be forgotten by those whom I was kind to, because when I want someone to remember me along with my having been kind to them (or even worse: if I want them to remind me instead of the kindness), it shows that my being kind was all about me and not the other. Being kind is always about the other (although I do receive a huge benefit too by being kind: the warm glow of feeling happy.  

it takes place in a relationship

His Holiness The Dalai Lama once made a remark about the relationship between ‘compassion’ and ‘happiness’. I personally think that by replacing ‘compassion’ by ‘being kind’, the spirit of this quote is left untouched. “If you want others to be happy, be kind. If you want to be happy, be kind”. If you ask me which words in this sentence I would like to give more attention, they would be ‘others’ and ‘you’. This, for me, is the essence of kindness: it takes - no matter how casual or short it may be - a relationship between me and another living being. Human or animal. Or even a plant. Kindness, or more precise: the act of being kind, is always directed towards another being, for kindness is only kindness if it is being received.

no need for reciprocity 

In our local supermarket there is guy who always sits next to the entrance. He is homeless and sells a special newspaper for 2 euros. Fifty cents of each sold newspaper are for him. They are part of his daily income. But more than only an income, his selling newspapers at the entrance of our supermarket provides him with contact with people. Most of the shoppers pass him by, as he has become pretty much ‘part of the furniture’. Some buy his newspaper, while smiling at him. Others stop to exchange a few words (’How are you?’ ‘Everything alright?’). I always buy a newspaper, as soon as I see him holding a new edition. I always pay 3 euros, which enlarges his ‘profit’ a bit. And if I happen to not hold cash, I make sure to give him a bag of tangerines, a doughnut (or two), a role of tea-biscuits or a few croissants. I don’t need to ask him anymore, I know what he prefers. And when I render either of these ‘small acts of kindness’, I literally never look back after his ‘have a fine evening’. For I (think I) know that before he will focus again on his next potential customer, I have left him with a warm glow of someone who has been treated kindly. Similar to the glow I feel inside myself of having been kind. The glow of feeling happy. And that, more than anything else, is enough (reward) for me.     

[whatcamillethinks]

I was waiting at the side of a busy throughway on the border of Muthialpet and Pondicherry, in coastal South-India. There was a lot traffic that morning and I saw that it was going to take more time for me to cross that road. So I took a few steps back, stepped into the shade of the small wine shop behind me and watched the cars, busses, bullock-carts, motorbikes, scooters, mopeds, goats and cows pass through the narrowest spot in the road, a sort of funnel, where they all came together, almost on top of each other, just for a brief moment before fanning out over a wider road area to go their own way again. While I was watching this colorful spectacle - I forgot to mention the stray dog and an old hen, trying to simultaneously make the crossing - my eye caught a billboard across the road, about 2 meters high, hung up on a school building. It said: “If our children don’t learn the way we teach, we have to teach the way they learn”. I have never seen - and I was really surprised to see this in India - a quote that better represents what education is all about, than this. That is why I have never forgotten it and upto this day, more than 5 years later, I could make a detailed painting of that crossing, including the dog and hen. That much of an impression it made on me. And still does, for I am blessed to be in a place, 8000 miles away from that dusty road in tropical India, where they honor the same adage. Here, where I live since 2014, in the Netherlands, education centers around the same concept. But as a parent of two teens, both of them struggling to keep pace with the demands that education puts on their tender shoulders, I also see that the concept is not fully implemented. Here’s where I still see space for tremendous improvement. Improvement that will show that when we do our children the favor of making learning possible, we do ourselves a favor. As parents and as custodians of a better society. 

[whatcamillethinks]

Feeling lonely - which is different from being a victim of loneliness - can work out very creatively in your art. In fact, connecting with the psychological layer in you that experiences the loneliness  - you can see the layer when closing your eyes - enables you to ‘plug into’ the creative energy that surrounds all of us all of the the time, but that only few willfully connect with. Feeling alone, or actually being left alone, can be a pretty baffling psychological state. And if not addressed properly, can leave you artistically paralyzed. Today I heard someone say: ‘don’t think, just paint’ and I personally feel that especially in times where you feel lonelier than at other times, this is imperative: take up a brush, a pencil or pen (it doesn’t really matter what the medium is) and sit before a white, not too large piece of paper, and .. start. Start drawing or painting the first thing that comes to your mind and take care of not wanting to draw it perfectly, keep it ‘messy’ or ‘inaccurate’, if you will. 

And tell us what happened to you afterwards. 

[whatcamillethinks]

All we are is stories really. When we aren’t a story, we have not existed when we are gone. No one would remember us, if it were not for the stories that are being told about us. These stories become us. They vary across family circles, circles of friends and relatives. They vary according  to the relationship a storyteller had with us when we were in his or her life. They vary across the customs of storytelling in a certain culture. In some stories take a more serious place, in others they are casual witnesses of what happened, to be modified whenever convenient. Personal stories keep you from entering your grave permanently, where you will be forgotten if not for those who keep the garden around the graves free from weeds. And those, family members perhaps, who live nearby, who take the effort to visit your grave once in a while to refresh the flowers who, upon their arrival, have always already died long ago. 

Like you. 

[whatcamillethinks]

I don’t see the world as it is, but as it appears to me. Every morning I make myself a coffee and then gaze at the world outside our apartment. This is how I like to start my day, after having said ‘good morning’ to whoever of my children has woken up with me at that time. I stand or sit there, with a cup of hot coffee in my hand, sipping it and looking outside the window. And I feel immensely at ease. At ease with myself, my inner self, and at ease with the world outside. Whether the sun shines or it rains, it does not make a difference for me. I feel at peace with everything around me, inside and outside. I am not sure how much of this feeling must be attributed to my first morning coffee, but I suspect that I somehow enter in a reflective or even meditative state. A condition in which boundaries between inside and outside, between mind and physical reality, somewhat subside. They don’t disappear altogether, I am still aware of me sitting or standing here, inside my home, and the trees, the creek, the grass and the weather being out there. But there is a gentle synchrony, an almost dance-like relationship that has come to the foreground. 

I am ready the face the day’s challenges. 

[whatcamillethinks]

Life eternal

Do you think that ‘our days are counted’? And that ‘we must make every day count’? Both sentences reflect a sense of urgency. Or doom, you could say. They stand for our attitude towards the timely nature of our lives. And the fact that one day (who knows when?) our life, that is: you, will cease to exist. Strangely enough, except perhaps when you are haunted by an acute psychosis or a bout of schizophrenia, this time bound nature of ours does not render a lot of anxiety. At the surface, that is. I, for myself, do feel this urgency as anxiety sometimes, but more so when I woke up from a disturbing dream world where my real fear of death has been played out to me using known characters - friends, family - from the past. Then I become aware of my ‘will to live forever’. But we don’t. Live forever. Therefore I have decided to at least make sure that my children have my legacy: a few paintings (and the ones that I am still to paint). So that - and here it is - I will be remembered. Because that, if anything, will ensure that I ‘live on’. Perhaps not forever, most certainly beyond the grave and - I hope - for another generation among the children of my children, if any. Because all the rest of humanity will be too busy being busy. And I’m fine with that :) 

[whatcamillethinks]

Tijd

‘Waar haal ik de tijd vandaan?’. Dat is vaak het eerste wat bij ons opkomt als we onszelf net hebben horen beloven dat we binnenkort weer eens een boek gaan lezen. We hebben geen tijd meer. Niets kan er meer, eigenlijk. Behalve dan iets dat ‘even snel’ gedaan kan worden: Facebook checken (we blijven dan vaak veel langer hangen dan we zelf dachten), mail checken (voor we het weten zijn we al aan de beantwoording van onze derde mail begonnen) en eten (dat kan inderdaad heel snel, zeker met die steeds snellere bezorgtijden van Thuisbezorgd.nl). 

Onze relaties daarentegen moeten ons ‘heel lang’ (en vooral niet te snel) bevredigen (excuse le mot). Daar moet alles wat we tekort komen (mooie term als het gaat om tijd) weer worden goedgemaakt door lang en lekker genieten. 

De kunstenaar - niet de levenskunstenaar die we allemaal zijn, maar de kunst-kunstenaar, de artiest, de schilder, beeldhouwer en noem maar op - heeft het goed getroffen. Of slecht, als het ook een haastenmaker is. Want kunst, tja .. het laat zich niet echt ‘in de tijd dwingen’. Eerstens is het vaak (o gruwel!) wachten tot de inspiratie komt en dan .. ja, dan is het weer maar ‘afwachten’ en zien hoe snel men opschiet - iets wat trouwens nooit echt in het hoofd van de kunstenaar opkomt tijdens het schilderen (tenzij iemand misschien letterlijk staat te wachten tot iets klaar is, zoals bij sneltekenen of -schilderen op een kunstmarkt o.i.d. 

Het resultaat van al dat wachten is .. iets moois (vaker wel dan niet). Het wachten (en het schilderen) wordt dus beloond. De onthaastingsprijs!

Ik zou daarom iedereen van harte willen aanbevelen om te overwegen het metier van kunstenaar uit te proberen. Al was het alleen maar om plotseling te beseffen dat je alle tijd hebt.  

[workediaquotes]

The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn. - Lucian Freud https://workedia.com/quotes/painter-must-give-completely-free-rein-any-feeling-or-sensations-he-may-have-and-reject

[whatcamillethinks]

What can I do?

There is a great amount of things that I can do, provided I don’t set my goals too high. The simplest is ‘being’. It happens almost effortlessly. In fact, although I am not aware of it most of the time, I am doing it all of the time. You can ‘be’ too. In fact, you are already. That saves a lot of effort and can be safely ticked off our ‘to do’ list. What else? I can express myself. I can even do this while I am in prison, or when I am cast in cement (hoping that this will never happen, of course. I am claustrophobic, you see). Expression in art, for example, is a great thing to do, provided you have the means (to buy the stuff you need) to actually do it. To paint, sculpt, write, for example. But even when you posses nothing, at least: nothing to produce art with, you can still express yourself by way of talking. Some people are worth listening too. You are worth listening to too, but even when you don’t have an audience (of one or more), you can still talk (although I would, admittingly, feel awkward being caught by someone else while talking to myself). But you can talk, that is: tell stories or even recite a poem or sing a song .. to yourself. In your mind. It might not sound breathtaking, but it does energize me doing this. Not for a long time, but still. If I am without other means (either because I can’t afford to buy anything or I am in a place where starting to paint or sing a song would not be considered appropriate), this is definitely my last resort. An option that keeps me in my comfort zone, where surrender to an otherwise negative train of thought would bring me down from where I am. 

There is a great amount of things I can do. Whatever I choose depends on the situation. Whatever you choose depends on your perception of the situation too. We’re not different, you and I. The same principles govern our psychology. And that psychology says that there’s always an option left, although a poorer one than the one we might actually prefer (I’d prefer painting over singing, for example), but still .. an option. 

Life, my life, your life, our life .. it is nothing but what we perceive it to be.

It is all in our mind. 

Really. 

[themiracleforest-deactivated202]

[whatcamillethinks]

.. no matter what other people say

[lonequixote]

the art will tell them - Jermaine Rogers

(via @lonequixote)

[whatcamillethinks]

Art As A Conflict Resolution Method

What is the root cause of the our conflicts? Marie Doucey in her paper ‘Understanding the Root Causes of Conflicts: Why It Matters for International Crisis Management’ argues that conflicts are the result of a process driven by unfulfilled needs and collective fears. One has to address both for the establishment of sustainable peace. The Italian novelist and literary critic Umberto Eco tells us that conflicts are being caused, among other factors, by the defence, in political circles, of scientific values, of technological development and modern western culture in general. The Dutch social psychologist and researcher Fieke Harinck thinks that conflicts between individuals are increasingly characterized by differences in core values. 

Apart from conflicts caused by power inequality (I guess most conflicts are) I think that conflicts are caused by people having different viewpoints. Which, in itself isn’t a big deal, but the fact that one isn’t able to accept this without feeling unhappy, is. Conflict exists because people see things differently. And cannot accept that. 

Now look at art. Whether you take two paintings of late 19th century Impressionist painters or two abstract works by 20th century masters, within the same style but surely between different painting styles, people disagree about what art is beautiful and what is not appealing. In art, however, it is quite uncommon that a war (beyond words) starts as a result of a difference in viewpoints. Even art-critics except the fact that one can have different opinions (even strong ones) and still continue to deal with one another. 

If we could somehow induce the natural tolerance that goes with enjoying (or despising) certain art above other art in a context ridden by (power) conflicts caused by people not respecting (or even wanting to understand) one another’s viewpoint, perhaps we stand a chance to reach enduring peace that cannot be based but on mutual respect for one another’s way of looking at reality. 

If nothing works perhaps we can then try art as a conflict resolution method.