December reflections + 11 rules of being a human being

The new year 2017 is just some hours away. Still really happy about the #decemberreflections2016, and the way they brought back so many memories. Reflecting on 2016 also made me think about 2017. Here are some notes from this different December:

• This year was, and: 168 hours / week
• Best decision of 2016
• Biggest lesson from 2016
• 5 things about me

While browsing through the blog this week, I came across this thoughtful list. and as I sooner or later will forget about all this again, I thought I pull the post up again, as it also fits with the reflections:

11 Rules For Being A Human Being:

Rule 1: You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around

Rule 2: You will learn lessons.You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid.

Rule 3: There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial and error: experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works”.

Rule 4: A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule 5: Learning lessons does not end.
There is no part of Life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule 6: “There” is no better than “here”.
When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here”.

Rule 7: Others are merely mirrors of you.You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule 8: What you make of your life is up to you.
You have the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

Rule 9: Your answers lie inside you.The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

Rule 10: You will forget all this.

Rule 11: You can remember whenever you want.

Frankfurt Bookfair 2016: Snapshots, The Arts, documenta, forbidden books, a poetic shore + a personal reflection

Themes + Snapshots 
"Rain all day" - that's what the weather forecast promised for Thursday, the day I went to the Frankfurt Bookfair. "Hopefully they are wrong," I thought. As yes, the bookfair is mostly an in-door event, but they have this gorgeous central plaza. Which comes with an open stage, a reading-tent, and and a read-and-snack-area which basically is a breather between halls. With more than 7000 national and international exhibitors, the fair is the largest bookfair of the world. At some point, you long for that breather in between all the impressions and authors and highlights.

When I read through the infos for the 2016 bookfair last week, I learned that both the settings of the different areas of the fair and the fair concept itself has shifted: it now also includes an art section. And has more stages for themes. Their focus topics in 2016 are: Asia, Kids, Education, Art & Design, Self-Publishing, Weltempfang"/Global Reading,., here's more: Frankfurt Book Fair Themes

As a starter, here some photos and links, to give a feeling for the atmosphere. For more impressions, try the twitterstream: #fbm16  and #frankfurtbookfair



The author tent in the central plaza. The author who is signing in the photo is Connie Palmen, I read one of her books some years ago.




In one of the international halls.



The indie lit scene: Indiecom and Pioneer Talks



Books, books, and more books, in all kind of languages, about all kind of topics. The bookfair, in some ways, it is the world in miniature.

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The Arts + documenta book project

When I read through the infos for the 2016 bookfair last week, I learned that both the settings of the different areas of the fair and the fair concept itself has shifted: it now also includes an art section, a fair inside the fair, called: THE ARTS+

It's a vibrant and surprising hall, presenting current and upcoming art themes and events. The big eye-catcher was the XXL-book of artist David Hockney:



The upcoming documenta was part of the THEARTS+ program, they introduced a special art project:



"The Parthenon of Books" is an art project that will be shown in 2017 in Kassel at the documenta, and which now officially gets started: The argentinian artist Marta Minujín is collecting books from forbidden and persecuted authors for it. For more about the documenta and the project, visit: documenta 14 / Athen / Kassel



The Arts-fair encompasses both the future and the past: there's a multi media booth of the first VR-association: Erste deutsche Fachverband für Virtual Reality ....

And just some steps from there, the Gutenberg-Museum leads back to the beginnings of printed books:

From print to the web: the international artists Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei currently invite people to join "Moon", an interactive project that transcends borders set by nationality and language.




Here's the project website: moonmoonmoonmoon.com
And here's an article about the project. "Make your Mark on the Moon"

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Guest of Honour:  Flanders + the Netherlands 

This year, the guest of honour at the bookfair is Flandern & the Netherlands. With the slogan “Dit is wat we delen” (“This is what we share”), they will present not just novels, nonfiction and poetry, but also new forms that have emerged from the book arts, creative industry and other artistic fields.

The two countries developed an original idea for their presentation in the "Forum":



A poetic ocean moment

As always, the guest country gets a hall to represent, and they turned it into an open, airy space with ocean bay atmosphere. So nice. They put up some loungers, and I was lucky and there was a free one – and the woman next to it on a chair welcomed me by the guest countries, and invited me to listen to poetry. Which she would read. Live. For me. Such a nice and different “exhibition”.

The poem she read was by Anneke Brassinga, here's the start:

BY THE SEA
The wind weighs the words
and finds them too light
the wind weeps, sweeps the words
aside, out of sight...

and here's the poem page: By The Sea

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A personal flashback/forward reflection 

The bookfair, it is an extraordinary event anyway. For me, it was special in a different way this year: the last time I've been there was 2 years ago, in 2014. It was the last day of my "normal" life. Of course, as it goes with last normal days, you aren't aware of that while they happen. It was a sunny Thursday. One day later, on Friday evening, I discovered a lump in my breast. And hoped it wouldn't be what I thought it was, yet had a bad feeling from start. Which then got confirmed a bit later, and lead to a year of cancer treatments, and a long time of recovery.

So going to Frankfurt again, 2 years later, wasn't just about going to the book fair again. It also included this symbolic element of returning to a place that now carries a different kind of meaning for me.

Here's the memory of that bookfair day in 2014:
Frankfurt International Bookfair: Printed, Digital, We are Here - Snaphots & Links,

And here's the story of what happened afterwards: c is for cancer

2299 moments, the night-side of life, best of 2014 & the horizon of 2015

In the last couple of days, I revisited the files with the photos I took this year, and picked some of them to get printed and framed, so that I can give them as gifts for Christmas. Revisiting the photo files also brought back so many memories of this year, like the one above: spotting a sun halo, and trying to catch a picture of this rare sky moment. Such luck, to be there right at that time, and probably one of my favourite images 2014 (here's a larger version of the photo with notes).

Altogether, it was a beautiful, and special year.  Today I counted the photos I took since January: 1127 with my photo camera, and almost the same with my mobile phone camera: 1172. Which makes 2299 photos altogether.



Each photo, a moment that made me pause and notice and enjoy, and take a picutre, to keep the memory. Some moments were huge, like the ocean horizon of Mallorca island. Some small, like this playful "selfie" reflection photo of an art installation.

"If it wasn't for this illness, it would have been a truly wonderful year," I joked yesterday while we were out there, on a walk, and watched 3 birds sailing in the December wind. But then, it still is. And I am glad for those photos, to bring back the memory of those small big moments that shaped the year.

Looking at time, it feels a bit weird that it was my birthday now, this day of life celebration, just a few days after the first chemo therapy. But also kind of symbolic, with the start of this treatment, and the step into  a new, different year of life.
 


This week I came across this quote from Susan Sontag, who calls illness “the night-side of life”.. here is the longer quote, from her book “Illness as Metaphor”, more + quote)

“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

So I will be citizen of this other side for now. Which also is part of life. I guess one of the most important tasks is to keep the larger perspective, to see beyond the immediate discomfort to that wider horizon. To remember that I am basically on the way to the kingdom of the well. And to notice the small beautiful moments each day, especially now.



This year started with a mindful January, a time of noticing a small moment each day. I want to continue this in January 2015, and also spend time revisiting moments from previous years.

Another thing that I started last January, and that I want to continue: to try and see art every now and then, when I have good days. It was one of the things that added so much to this year, those brief visits to places of art and history, and the reflections they brought. Often it was the smaller ones that I enjoyed more, like the Hamish Fulton exhibition in the local gallery here. Which inspired so many other memories of art and places, from London to landart.

And I want to keep blogging, and join the photo challenges, share moments, visit the moments of others from around the globe. Be part of this larger, electronically connected world, especially in this time of being more restricted in the things I can do and the places I can go. It's an ongoing inspiration, this sharing of moments and experiences, around the world, along those wider horizons.

Plus, of course, there is the world of books. I want to keep reading around the world, and spent some time yesterday sorting a shelf, to put the books there that are waiting to be read - more about that, in an own blog post.

..I started this blog post yesterday evening, and now it turned longer. It is morning now. The field I see from the window, which was green yesterday, is covered with the first real layer of snow of this winter. And this revisit of images of 2014 now turned into a sketched plan for the upcoming season through the night-side:

- To notice the small moments
- To keep the larger horizon in mind
- To keep walking towards that horizon 

Step by step.
Moment by moment.

May 2015 bring many beautiful moments, for everyone, around the world~~



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Links


Here are more "best of 2014" moments from around the world: photo friday

And I now started to mark all blog posts about this shadow journey with a tag, you can click here to read them: C is for cancer, and for courage, too 

into the dark (man son 1969)

last week, an exhibition opened in the Villa Merkel, a gallery not far from here: “MAN SON 1969. Vom Schrecken der Situation” – “MAN SON 1969. Of the Distress of the Situation”. i first read about it in the saturday newspaper - they had an exhibit photo as illustration, 3 death masks of the RAF terrorists who committed joined suicide in prison in 1976, in Stuttgart (20 miles from here). the photo stuck with me. and brought me back to the comment i wrote in january, in respone to a Rumpus article on the RAF / 'Baader Meinhof Complex' film, here the link: the crossing line to violence.

not sure if i would have gone to the exhibition, but with the comment, and with the current BluePrintReview issue (dis)comfort zones, the theme called for a visit. so i went. walked through the park. took pictures of spring flowers on the way (below). and then entered. a different world.

the 2 focus points of the exhibition are persons / events of 1969: the murders committed by the Manson-Family in Hollyood, and the actions of the RAF-terror group in germany in 1969. there is weird parallel between both groups, even when looking at the photos, both groups had so many young, good-looking, energetic leaders/ members. added to that, all the emotions / happenings / moods of this time, and the group dynamic, and also the almost “pop” / media coverage aspect of it, interpreted in artistic ways: this ambivalent thrill of the dark.

the exhibit remained with me, and i ended up looking up web pages in the evening. the exhibition originally was in Hamburg, and they have a picture page up, here: Hamburg-Kunsthalle: Man Son

in the exhibition, there also was reference to the “Helter Skelter” exhibition in LA in 1992. here a link: moca.org/archive/exhibition/HelterSkelter


and here a second photo from yesterday, a blurred image from inside a dark pyramid sculpture with fragmenting mirrors and a sound engine. (that's me in the mirrors)

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2 additional notes: while i visited the exhibition, there weren’t many people around (as it was during the week, and in the afternoon). so i came to talk with one of the guides there, and we talked about the RAF time, which she remembers well: she was a young mother back then. "In these years, there were 'Wanted' photos up on the door of all post offices," she said. "And whenever they caught one of terrorists, they crossed the photo out." We stood in front of a row of photos while talking, and she then pointed at the images, a picture series that shows 2 ordinary persons in a cafe, photographed by a friend. only that they 2 are RAF-members. Wanted.

and weird, isn't it: the double meaning of "wanted". there was a sexual factor involved in the RAF group, and also in the Manson family.

and another weird thing: after the exhibition, i walked back to my car. got in. and turned the radio on. and the very song that played was ACDC. Highway to Hell. it brought me right back to the school days of turning it loud. in provocation. in a feeling of thrill of darkness. so many albums, they sold. so many people who sang and screamed along to it. Raced to it in a car. No stop signs / Speed limits / Asking nothing / Don't need reason / Hey Satan / Paid my dues / I'm on the Highway to hell / My friends are gonna be there, too, eh /

not that far from man son, this is.

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to end this on a lighter note: here's an outside view of the Villa Merkel. it's an old house surrounded by a park. right now, the magnolia trees there start to develop petals, one of the magnolias came with a round carpet of blue spring flowers, each of them opening to the sun, as if in contrast to the dark themes within. .