Wild garlic
Almost forgotten
But not yet 🙂
Some thoughts
My days are still busy. Today i did the last bit of cleaning up my old house. Luckily there was enough room left over in the storage to put all the left over things. Tomorrow i will look at a possibility for a new room. It does seem very nice. A garden! But i have to wait if it will go through. Still a time of change. Not sure when that will end.
I will keep you informed, of course.
For now, have a good night sleep, or a good day’s work, or whatever you want to do. Salute!
Very early spring
Isolation
This morning i came across this long read in the Guardian: Splendid isolation: how I stopped time by sitting in a forest for 24 hours.
I love this article. A few quotes.
A word he used a lot in talking about his work, and in describing the experience and value of the nature solo, was “re-enchantment”. He was of the opinion that most people, most of the time, lived life in a state of disenchantment. What he wanted to do, above all, was to help people strip away the layers of hard rationalism that accrued around the adult mind, so that they could return to a more childlike engagement with the world. And in reaching this state, he said, this place of re-enchantment, we could come to see ourselves not as separate from and in control of nature, but as part of it.
As weirdly counterintuitive as it feels to acknowledge, human beings are not naturally predisposed to think of life in terms of seconds and hours, of how they might be optimised. The development of mechanical clocks during the middle ages and, later, the advent of widespread precision timekeeping that facilitated the industrial revolution, fundamentally changed the way in which the human animal related to the world. Time became both an abstraction and a commodity, a raw material to be bought and sold, saved or squandered.
The mass adoption of this new conception of time, abstract and removed from the organic context of nature, was central to the rise of capitalism, and to the accelerating mechanisation of life. “Beginning in the 14th century,” as the American cultural critic Neil Postman put it, “the clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded.” To sit by a river for a day and a night is to experience the reinstatement, if only temporarily, of that authority.
I sat in the Kralingse Bos at the side of the lake. Looking out over it towards the shape of the city of Rotterdam. Following the birds swimming in the water. Closing my eyes and trying to hear all the songs the birds sang all around me. I loved it. Apart from the cars drowning out sounds in the far distance. And at the same time i was thinking of this article. Many thoughts popped in my mind. Most are gone now. It doesn’t matter.
I hope you will enjoy the weekend! Salute!
Too many things
I’m tired. I talk a lot more with people. I enjoy it. But yes, i’m tired. It’s been a eventful last couple of weeks.
So that’s it for today. Going to bed. Watch some youtube, or television, or netflix. Hopefully i will fall asleep really soon.
Salute!
The accident
Well.
Yesterday i went to the storage business. A bit far out in a industrial estate park at the edge of Rotterdam. I walked back, past the house i used to live in between 1985 and 1995. I remember thinking i could take a tram, but i decided against it. I like to walk.
Then i found myself lying on the pavement. I fell straight down. I felt my mouth. Blood was on my hands. And i saw a broken tooth in front of me. I was stunned. Shocked. My teeth! With my tongue i felt the broken front tooth. The tooth besides it was bend inward. Someone said to me the blood was coming from the upperlip of my mouth. Someone gave me some paper handkerchiefs.
Stunned.
People walked on. I sat there feeling totally helpless. A young student passing by talked to me and first phones the ambulance. Not serious enough. I could talk, a little bit. I told him a taxi would be good. I thought of going to the first aid department in the closest hospital, the Erasmus. I stood up. I was still conscious. I had not blacked out. I didn’t feel dizzy. Or nauseous. But i was not right.
I said goodbye to the young student. If you ever read this post, thank you for your help!
When i came at the hospital some people looked at me. Luckily i had to wait only around five minutes to get called by a nurse and get my first investigation. If i had a tetanus injection the past ten years. Hmm no. How i felt. Well, i felt sort of not too bad. But i was worried about my mouth. About my teeth. I felt completely mutilated. My mind wend back to that moment i fell. Why? Why didn’t i lift up my feet? Why did i trip over such a small curb? Why didn’t i break my fall with my hands? Why?
It was too late to think these thoughts. It had happened. I could only deal with the aftermaths. Try to keep my head straight.
A doctor came in and went through my arms and legs and head and stomach and eyes. Nothing there. Luckily. She called another doctor to see if they should suture the wound in my mouth. The upper part of my lip had a wound from the inside out. Completely through. One suture on the outside, one on the inside, they said. And i should get a CT scan. I’m over forty, they said. To be sure, they said.
Another nurse came by to bring me to the CT scanner. I closed my eyes while i was lying in there. My first time in such a contraption. I didn’t think there was anything wrong in there, but i was happy they were careful and did everything by the book.
Next to the first aid there was a emergency dentist. After all was done and said, the doctor brought me there. I wanted to be sure. To have a professional opinion. My side tooth was not broken, but it was pointed inward. A dentist came by and asked me when it had happened. A quarter past four, half past four i said. She nodded. And my broken tooth. Damn!
I got a anesthesia injection. That would hurt, she said. But i was still having the sedation i got from the suture. I didn’t feel a thing. It felt like the dentist pulled my tooth straight with her hands. Pretty sure that wasn’t happening. But it was fine. I felt with my tongue the inside of my teeth. It was right! I felt so happy. It was fixed! So happy!
Than the dentist made a porcelain bit added to my front tooth. Temporarily. I will need to get it fixed later on. But this made me so happy. I was looking a bit more normal.
Well, a bit more. I still look mutilated.
I got a taxi back home. Ted and Assie i had called earlier. They were shocked when they saw me. My mouth swollen up. The glass in my glasses was scratched. I need to get a new glass. Damn.
Last night i slept sort of good. My knee hurts. My mouth hurts. My body aches. But i will be alright. In the end.
And i wonder. The sort of seborrheic dermatitis i have for the past year. Around my mouth, my nose, my eyes and eyebrows. So visible. And now this. So visible. It is hard for me to believe this is all a coincidence. I do believe we shape our own life. I’m not sure what to make of this though. It does remind me of what i was saying last week to a friend. I feel like i’m finding my own voice. I’m finding what i want to say, how i want to say it. And that makes me really happy, gloriously happy. And an accident like this pulls me right back.
In the end, i’ll be fine in a few weeks.
*sigh*
Storage
Standing
Published on February 3, 2020 at 6:00 by Ellen
Categorised in: Drawing and watercolour
Dag lief huisje mijn
