and pleases where it goes

rachel brought bright blue skies and sunshine from ravenstein to amsterdam today.

she also brought a fisheye lens for me to try out...

...and an indefinable something that proved irresistible to the butterflies in the hortus botanicus..



but, best of all, she brought her own warm and radiant self.
it's the last week of winter, and it couldn't have started better.

seen through

that old expression, the one concerning a picture's worth, took on new meaning for me as i prepared my submission to photoblogs magazine: a thousand words is - for a simple anecdotal writer like me - an epic task. a challenge it was, but a rewarding one, and i'm delighted to have participated, and proud to be there, in the first issue, in the company of talented souls like nitsa, charles, peter, and brita.
thanks, matt!

and no place to go

"solitude begets whimsies."
- mary worley montagu

a frivolous post: what better way to start a winter week?

the weather with you

we finally saw real snow here today - snow that lasted beyond the morning; tender, tireless snow that flurried and settled so splendidly that delays and cold feet ceased to matter.
this old city, touched by winter, feels timeless, and almost surrealistically authentic.
the staid brickwork, the graceful gables and the tiled roofs, the cobblestones, the mullioned windows, the drawbridges, the bicycles: they are picture-postcard-pretty
at any time, but now, at season's end, and powdered pristinely white, they are
simply enchanting.

the sweeter the juice

i always maintain, wryly, that my assimilation here in this country, given my
minimal fondness for the colour orange, may never be complete...

but orange in nature, and orange by nature: now those are different stories altogether.

holding on tight

"the spectacles of experience: through them you will see clearly a second time." 
- henrik ibsen (major norwegian playwright of the late 19th century, 1828-1906)

i feel distracted, these days, and slightly discouraged, suspended as i am between life as i know it - my job ends in a few weeks - and life as it will become. prospects are sparse and unsettled. all i can do is fold myself firmly around a fine strand of optimism and hope it holds.
i could use a pair of rose-coloured glasses right now, but all i can seem to find are blue ones.

it's a wrap

it was cold today, in den helder.
everyone, everything, shivered and struggled in the icy wind: me despite my meters of muffler..
and this mighty pampered oak despite his.

drive, she said

a dodgy back - and visitors expected for tea - meant no leisurely sunday out and about; a little expedition, however - to a deserted industrial park nearby - was exactly what the doctor ordered. just a five-minute drive from home, just a few square blocks of sheds and warehouses, crates and clutter: it was unexpectedly photogenic...but then again, in the fresh air, and under a sky as crisp and blue as it was last weekend, even the most everyday looks extraordinary.

the space between

they swing separately, on their own hinges, transcribing slow arches on their
own halves of the meadow, and they never truly touch, for that is the nature of their commitment.
they face each other only at the end of time passed, equidistant and bound: by their mutual story, by this singular space, and by that endless, endless receding view.

a small world after all

this web - this place we share - is wide, yes, but paradoxical: disparate and united, detached and intuitively intimate.
being even a little part of it pleases me immensely, and has done for
TWO
WHOLE
YEARS
today.
thank you!