The neighouring cottage tucked into the fynbos.
It is autumn now in the Southern parts of Africa, rapidly approaching winter and the proteas are blooming again.
The little blighter on the right is determined to join the fray.
Objets trouvés.
Skull of a baby seal.
Aloe flowers about to open.
With love from
Colleen & Walter
Betty’s Bay, Wednesday 15 May 2013
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), The Dream (1910). Museum of Modern Art, New York (Source: WebMuseum, Paris: http://www.ibiblio.org).
Much has been researched in the last almost three hundred years about dreams and dreaming, yet, we still do not know where we go when we dream.
Looking at early, biblical accounts of dreams in the history of dreams, we see their images and interpretations to be of another world outside the one we experience with our day-to-day senses.
See Jacob’s dream during his flight from his brother Esau:
Michael Leopold Lukas Willmann (1630-1706 ), Die Engelsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder), ca. 1681 (Source: Wikipedia).
In Willmann’s imagination there is more of a sense of the above, whereas Blake keeps closer to the biblical text and gives us much of the up and downward movement, but then, Willmann is a man of the Baroque with its heavenly glance and Blake the mystical-romantic of metaphysical union:
William Blake (1757-1827), Jacob’s Ladder (ca. 1800) British Museum, London (Source: Wikipedia).
The idea is that of a world we can access, once we have, in a manner of speaking, taken leave of our senses – shutting down while opening up, opening up while shutting down.
Leo and Anni in Cape Town’s Two Oceans Aquarium.
Do fish dream? And if – where do they go?
REM (rapid eye movement) phases have been observed in Dolphins, so, they might dream. What about trees then and other organic matter?
If it sounds absurd, halt for a moment and consider how all forms of life on earth, if not the universe, are in infinitely complex ways interconnected.
If the dream, with Gérard de Nerval’s first line of his Aurélia, is a second life, and if that other life is outside the bounds of our quotidian consciousness, then it is possible to think that instead of rising up we might sink into a different realm of depths in space and time. Not necessarily parallel universes but places that we are connected to, yet cannot access without the loss or powering down of our faculties, which are harmonised and optimised to run the affairs of our daily life.
To let go of those strong forces that for good reasons, hold us here, we need to sleep; as Hamlet is contemplating:
… To die to sleep,/
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub, /
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,/
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/
Must give us pause. (First folio text of 1623)
- a drastic contemplation of letting go for good.
Where, however, do we go in our dreams, from where we do return?
Namib desert after a series of rainstorms.
The desert is such a place outside the bounds of day-to-day living. Or the ocean, source of all life on earth.
False Bay. Cape Peninsula.
Soon
will we all
be able travelling
outside the bounds
of earth’s gravitational field,
widening the scope
of our daily experiences.
In dreaming then
we deeper plumb this depth
of nourishment for our confidences.
And
our wildest
dreams
come
true.
Much of our ordinary self slips into our dreams – projections, suppressions, wishes and dreads. Yet, while therein bound, we are freed to live another, second life. In dreaming we re-connect to all living matter on this planet and beyond. That is our ultimate freedom. And paraphrasing Jean-Jacques Roussseau’s 1762 opening dictum in his “Social Contract”: Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains: Man is born in chains but finds himself everywhere free to dream.
Coastal road near Rooiels.
With love as always
Walter & Colleen
Betty’s Bay
Friday, 10 May 2013
Kleinmond harbour during a snoek run in August last year.
A still autumn day at the harbour 1st of May 2013.
The old Harbour Road has been resurfaced for pedestrians to walk about. The Lego-boxes at the back where designed to be apartments and are now offered as time-share units. The old quaintness of the place has taken a knock. Shop owners however along Harbour Road are putting their best fronts forward to make this place lively and spirited as before.
Pottery, Restaurant, Nursery and Info Centre.
Despite the obvious criticism one must have in respect of sensitive town planning or the lack thereof, Harbour Road, Keinmond, is worth a visit, more than ever before. As with all new challenges in life, they raise the spirit to do well against all odds.
With love as always
Colleen & Walter
Betty’s Bay, 1st May 2013
Many things bring about a sense of well-being.
One of them is a walk on the beach.
To be near the sea, from where we all once came.
Happiness is …
I don’t think happiness is … some thing or other.
Or if, then a composite thing, having come, being brought together.
Sometimes we view a thing and it makes us happy what we see.
Happiness is a momentary thing. It does not last. And fade it must.
It sinks into memory and there it feeds the fabric of our soul.
Sometimes we call it beauty, what we see.
The experience of beauty, of happiness, of being in good spirits, the experience of “eudaimonia” as the ancient Greeks called it, transcends your being in this moment into an extended realm of your self, the joyful otherness of things.
And the experience drifts into your memory, adding colour to your soul and arouses in you the thirst for more.
In the end you cannot distinguish anymore between happiness and sadness, they flow into each other, being happy and sad at the same time. The horizon of your self widens to contain within it sea, mountains, shore, the cityscape and sky beyond.
Happiness is seeing the artist at work.
With love from
Colleen & Walter
Betty’s Bay, Monday, 29 April 2013
The stock market crash of 1929 marked the start of the greatest depression in modern history. (Courtesy of Wikipedia).
What is depression?
Depression is the unexpected – a serious deviation from the expected.
We expect the economy to continue to perform to our advantage.
We expect the weather to fit in with our weekend plans.
We expect people to behave rationally and virtuously.
We expect to wake up and be well.
And all of that at all times is in peril.
Are we then unfair in our expectations?
The economy has its own rhythm, pulse and psyche.
The weather follows and obeys the planet’s restless issuing of rules.
People virtuous at times and less at others, battle all day long with their own and any other’s rationality.
What is wellness? Waking up and feeding oneself into the day. Where is what? Does anybody care? Do you?
Having happily (?) wallowed in a muddy depression. A small herd in the Kruger Park on their way – (home?).
We are expecting things to be in ways they cannot be.
Our expectations continuously overshoot their range.
There is a cause for our depression. The deviation from the expected.
Had we but little ambition, had we and held what is and was but ours,
we might escape the curse of restlessness and sorrow.
Entrance to the DZ, Deutsche Zentralbank (German Central Bank), designed by Frank Gehry. Make of it what you like, but does it not look like a giant octopus- spider, slurping in millions of funds from hapless investors? In all its splendour it has an air of monstrosity, with all the makings of a depressing sight.
A depression is a weather system associated with low pressure. It is a warm front closely followed by a cold front, creating a rapidly changing weather pattern. Then there is the depression you feel when scanning the headlines of newspapers laid out on supermarket shelves. The warm feeling you might have had of late is followed by a cold shiver running down your spine.
Beautiful and alluring and yet a death trap. The way things operate.
Red flowering Guernsey Lily (Nerine sarniensis). Amaryllis family. Harold Porter Botanical Garden. Endemic to the Cape; first described on Guernsey Island.
Out of a crack in sheer rock. (Oxalis family?) Harold Porter Botanical Garden.
What do I do with my depression? Go public? Let people into the recesses of my psyche?
Eat myself silly so others can see what depression is doing to me?
Starve myself to near-death so the world can see how I suffer in silence and yet survive, barely?
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Melencolia I, 1514. Here is man at his most evolved, surrounded by all the symbols of abstract thought and rationality. Yet suspended in despair – having wings but not daring to fly.
Depression is a severe illness.
Depression is not an illness, but a state of mind.
Depression is an exercise in self-absorption.
Depression is the result of chemical imbalances.
Depression is something we all have within us.
Depression is nothing to be afraid of, but be wary.
Depression is not a deviation, but a digression.
Depression is a game, played by some for gain.
Depression is something we all at one time or other have to face.
Depression is a natural and a biblical thing.
Think of how we have been banished from paradise.
Without depression there would be no poetry.
Without depression there would be no music.
Without depression there would be nothing to make us happy.
No films.
No popcorn.
No ice cream.
No science.
No cricket or rugby or any soccer matches.
Depression therefore is a good thing.
It keeps us spinning.
Madly.
It is nothing we asked for.
It is a given.
Harold Porter Botanical Garden, Betty’s Bay. After recent rains.
A walk in the Harold Porter gardens is such a wonderful relief from worries for a while. The way we see and experience the natural world, does give us comfort to stay the distance.
There is, after all, overwhelming evidence of beauty in our world.
With love as always
Colleen & Walter
Betty’s Bay, Saturday 20 April, 2013
Travelling on the N2 between Botrivier, Caledon, Riviersonderend and Stormsvlei last week Easter Monday, early in the morning. Colleen photographed from the moving car and Walter in postproduction cropped and did some careful adjusting.
With love from
Colleen & Walter
Betty’s Bay, Sunday 14 April, 2013
Outside the Western Cape town of Worcester, passing Botha winery, a flock of African sacred ibisses (Threskiomis aethiopicus) were feasting on freshly discarded grape skins. They made quite an unholy (drunken?) dance upon this delicious heap.
Pitstop outside Ceres at the old toll house.
Breakfast companionship at a distance.
Gydo pass near Prince Alfred Hamlet.
Aloes, known as Kokerboom or quiver tree (Aloe dichotoma), part of the Northern Cape landscape.
Ironstone, found among the hillocks of the Karoo plains, some of them gong and have been inscribed by San people thousands of years ago.
Prof. Rasa our “Kalahari Trails” hostess, with Colleen and Michaela.
Meerkat “Kirri”, permanent house guest of “Kalahari Trail” manor, on Walter’s arm.
Four tented chalets, two each sharing a bush kitchen, toilet and shower. Water is provided from a nearby reservoir.
The sand grains of the Kalahari are covered with red iron oxide giving them their colourful sparkle and particular softness. Walking barefoot over the red dunes leaves your feet untouched and clean.
Our tented chalet.
Tea time.
In the absence of big predators in our area, our friends were brave enough and free to roam.
Gemsbok (Oryx gazella)
(Southern) Pale Chanting Goshawk (Melierax canorus).
The temperamental Blue Wildebeest.
The ubiquitous springbok.
Public housing project.
Another council housing project.
Our evening view. Soon the sky will become ablaze with myriads of stars.
The Gariep or Orange river at the falls.
On the way to Springbok via Aggeneys and Pofadder. The mountains of Namibia on the horizon. The N14 between Upington and Springbok has recently been broadened and resurfaced to strengthen the infrastructure of the Northern Cape, possibly for the extraction of rare minerals for the Chinese economy.
What were we expecting?
Pofadder is a thriving community of about 4000 inhabitants. Things are happening there.
Kamieskroon – centre of the Namaqualand wild flower season during August/September.
Swartland, breadbasket of the Western Cape, on the road to Porterville.
On the N2 between Riviersonderend and Caledon.
We will return to the red sands of the Kalahari.
With love
from Colleen & Walter
Bettys Bay, Tuesday 9 April 2013
