random thoughts of a sleepless mind

friday, pale sunny afternoon, I'm enjoying an unexpected free day after a ridicolous 4-hour sleep. 

I'll try to go for a walk to cure the bad taste left by the night shift. I'm leaving my job soon, heading for more exciting adventures that for once won't involve suit, fake smile and anaesthetic thoughts. or at least I hope so.

my drawings have their own life and, actually, have much more life than I do. they just keep popping up without lots of efforts from my side and this leaves me with mixed feelings. one day I hate them and the other day I deeply love them. sick. but wonderful.

looking for some inspiration on the world-wide web, I found something that made my day:

HE writes stories in 140 letters and HE draws them. THEY are certainly MORE than positive thoughts.

la pausa

un momento preciso di silenzio

Daysleeper, daysleeper, daysleeper

Good morning sir, it's your 5am wake up call. would you like to know the weather forecasts for today?

Uh? The what?

The weather forecasts sir...

Hell, no. thank you.

No problem. "my night is colored headache grey" and who cares about weather forecasts after all?

He will then take a taxi to whatever.
Two other hours for me to go.

midsummering

it has been raining for two days. probably more, but for the last two days it didn't stop at all, not even for a second.

eventually the rain ceased and on the street tonight the only sound I could hear was the creaking of my rusty bike. it was a wonderful autumnal night. in july.

“The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, the realist adjusts the sails”

everything can tell a good story and with a good story one can go everywhere. 

only few months ago, a story (and a very good one indeed) brought us to Den Helder...not that far, I have to say, but potentially, it still could lead us and anyone else, much more far away.

berthed at Willemsoord - Den Helder, there was this gorgeous 32 meter schooner brigantine named “Tres Hombres”, the dream of a man who, at some point of his professional carreer, decided to devote himself to protect the environment and work around an idea that has kept him busy during the last ten years: develop a system of sustainable transport through the use of vessels. exactly. beautiful, old-fashioned and 100% sustainable vessels. 
 

as he himself told us: men forgot that the most powerful engine on earth is the wind. 

the brigantine seems to be sprung out a tale of pirates but it's just a prototype vessel in service since December 2009. she has solar panels, an engine -for security reasons- that has never been used so far, no heating at all and one oven (if we want to be fussy, that is the only "not sustainable" element on the ship).  

needless to say, the crew is crazy -as it has to be-  and they welcome volunteer and passengers onboard to sail with them. of course, it's required to work. and hard.

when we met Tres Hombres she was just back from her second trip to the Caribbean -a fascinating route between Europe, the islands in the Atlantic and America- and her stow was still packed with tons of the first 100%sustainable rum (which we had to try!). the air was fresh and the sun was still high in the sky. there was music -imagine something like "The Captain" by Leonard Cohen- and everybody was happily celebrating the arrival of the vessel. one of those situations in which, no matters who you are, we're all friends. sustainable friends indeed, and drunk of course.


we felt like in a dream while maarten introduced us to the crew. they all looked like people with lots of wind and waves in their eyes, people who have seen a lot and sailed a lot. they have seen Haiti right after the earthquake. Tres Hombres has been the first European vessel arriving in the island with first aid. 


they've been sailing in the North Sea with no heating in the ship. their hair were dry, their faces burnt by the sun, their hands were strong and harsh and they smelt like salt. it may not make any sense to you but, believe me, they did.
 

they had that kind of gaze that people only get when are somewhat crazy. a gaze that people only have when  they know that they have a good story to tell and that with their story they are making the difference.

'till I will feel like writing something new

this is something worth reading...

 http://laser314.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-journey-leads-to-you.html

I feel like saying good night now.

if I'm reading you?

I've been living in Amsterdam for two years, one month, eight days and thirteen hours and I have been reading you for two years, one month, six days and seven hours.

indeed I am reading you.

once you've born...

the last book I've read is "the old neighbourhood" by the author of "kramer Vs kramer" Avery Corman (whom, I have to say, I ignored until recently... even though I have heard about the movie with Dustin Hoffman). 

the book was found by M. in the street during last queen's day and brought back home together with lots of other books (just like the one I'm reading at the moment, written by Graham Greene).

it was incredible how many interesting books we found for free in jordaan that day...but what amazed me about this particular book we've bumped into totally by chance, is the fact that it deals with a topic that has been nagging me lately, that is to say the relationship between parents and their children...or better, parents expectations. 

I'm terrible at it. I mean, at meeting parents expectations. I've always known that but, maybe because I'm now growing older, I feel it as a burden. Anyway, I'm too lazy to try to understand where this feeling comes from.

curiously enough, few weeks ago I saw a movie which was supposed to be about being gay in italy (quite hard, I guess) but instead, turned out to tell the story of two brothers trying to live their life, dealing with the expectations (AGAIN) of a father with a very conservative mind and a strong personality. 

 

i totally loved the movie. if the book made me ask some questions, the movie answered all of them.

estratto dai diari del Vietnam #1. Time for a vietnamese tale - in the mekong delta

we were supposed to meet our guide at 5am on the next day. 

he was a fisherman, a friend (supposedly the brother?) of an old woman that we met at the dock the same afternoon we arrived in Can Tho.

even though we didn't speak the same language, she managed to arrange for us a 6-hour boat trip to visit  two floating markets and the surrondings of the Mekong Delta, for a price that was cheaper than the fancy tour that a touristic agency had proposed us and also than other offers that we had received while walking on the streets.

she wanted us to wait for the guide in the guest house we were staying at, but we preferred to meet him in front of the hotel where the "contract" was signed, amidst handshacking, back-slapping, hugs, smiles and kisses (actually, the old lady was very impressed by the male italian beauty, overwhelming M. with compliments).

at the end, we weren't sure anymore whether the guide would have come to the guest house or would he have waited for us at the hotel, but we didn't bother to find  it out. it was such a beautiful evening there in Can Tho, and mangos tasted so good, that the possibility of worrying about anything was not even contemplated.

the next morning we woke up early in the guest house owned by the vietnamese Rambo (a very curious chap who was holding a grudge against us because we chose the cheapest room - WITH NO AIR CON, as he defiantly said) and, even though for 15 awful minutes we risked to loose our backpacks, locked in the cheap room with the keys inside (!!), and had to wash our teeth in the street, we managed to arrive on time at the meeting with our guide. who, obviously, wasn't there.

it was dark and humid outside and the air was thick and full of mosquitos, while the streets were populated by people making exercises or having breakfast sitting on the sidewalk. we were calm, he didn't show up but there had to be a reason. we started asking around, we didn't even have a name, only the receipt that the old lady gave us. some people tried to help us, talking among them and making phone calls, and eventually the guide and the old lady arrived, running towards us with some bread in their hands, for us to have breakfast.

we jumped on the boat and we were ready to go! for the first 30...maybe 40 minutes, this is all that we saw:

 

but when the sun came out of the morning haze, suddenly everything looked like this:                                                                                                                                

wallpeople

just a bunch of people in front of the wall this afternoon;  though, a lot of stories ON the wall, and most of them about travels. 

apparently, people use to link happiness to travels abroad, sunsets or breathtaking landscapes; to smiling kids, food or a cold beer in the sun. and to positive thoughts, of course.

it was a cold saturday, but the wall covered with happy pictures looked extremely warm.

the event only lasted few hours and, in my opinion, the organization will need some improvements  for the future, but I liked the idea. it had no meaning but sharing the picture of something that made you feel happy, just with the aim of making someone else feeling happy. a way to infect each other with happiness or, at least, as I interpreted it.

I wasn't very attracted by the "artistic" part of the event, I wasn't interested in the quality of the pictures.  rather, I was more curious about what is the meaning that people give to happiness. 

 

someone chose to stick on the wall the picture of a Thai man with his feet in the water harvesting rice...it  was a  b/w picture and, even though it was a very nice picture, I couldn't find any trace of happiness in it.

maybe it's me, but I can't link happiness to the idea of working for hours with the feet in the water...

 

 

anyway, eventually someone took my picture and I was a bit upset because I like it the way it looked on the wall. i know, they would have removed it anyway at the end but, since it wasn't stuck properly on the wall, maybe the wind could have taken it and made it fly all around the city, to end up in a canal....

  

                                                                                                                                                                                              

our saturday went on with a pleasant late lunch and a quick pause sitting in the sun right after.

   

all the photos are by courtesy of Marco

in the morning, we had to skip the noordermarkt, but still  we found time to stop for a while sun bathing, people watching and happiness tasting thanks to a real espresso on Prinsenstraat.

a guy brougth the photo of a trip to wish everybody the chance to go on holidays. 

i immediately thought of this as a free positive thought for tonight.

ok, laser 3.14 is not a girl...

and the weather is playing with Amsterdam now more than ever.

I'm on forced holidays, with a brand new book waiting to be read; new experiences ongoing (inolving the apartment upstairs and adorable little almond biscuits to sell in a friend's business); new things to learn (including foreign languages) and lots of unemployability skills to discover and develop; a visa to long for and a potential interview with an anonimous street poet (Laser 3.14, of course, who else?).

Enough stuff to make me feel upside down.

That is why I decided to keep looking for the less travelled road and, in order to do that easily, I'm going to start from my abandoned blog (tonight) and the world's famous Saturday's Noordermarkt (tomorrow).

My second step would be to add free positive thoughts to this blog.
Tonight I have two. One are the adorable little almond biscuits, that smell just like heaven:

Tozzetti van het huis, look for them @Talia, Prinsenstraat 12, A'dam

http://www.i-talia.net

The other is "Wallpeople". Only tomorrow I will be able to describe how it made me feel, all I can say now is check it out on http://www.wallpeople.org/

When did I leave my positive thoughts behind and why? That was an awful mistake!

what if

laser 3.14 were a girl?