Love of the Land: The Arab world going up in flames – but the US, EU and UN focus on Israel

Love of the Land: The Arab world going up in flames – but the US, EU and UN focus on Israel

13) From the many to the few without an answer

13) From the many to the few without an answer

Worse is to come. In an email an advertisement says: ‘Instagram may have turned us all into adept photographers, but it is smartphones that encouraged the masses to photograph their daily lives with their integrated cameras. For many, every event or scenery has to be documented and photo and video libraries keep growing accordingly.

The result: when looking for a picture or video, we often need to browse though thousands of photos or videos stored on our mobile device.

Flayvr is a free application that accesses your photo library and then automatically organizes your photos into separate albums and offers tools for quick, one-click sharing to social networks.’

Cees and Sylvia are the kind of travellers Chantal and I want to be. They’ve just been to South East Asia again, their favorite travelling ground. After dinner Cees shows his new Ipad and sweeps through his picture-load, hundreds of them fly by. A fraction still of all the pictures he has made during his travels.

The sun sets over the Mekong, a buffalo sniffs at the camera, a flower is blooming,  majestic mountains rise in the far distance, the setting sun shines a red light on the abandoned beach, an elephant in a pond, a rattan table carries a glass of Tiger beer.

And on and on it goes. Sunset after sunset, one bungalow more beautiful than the others, friendly smiling locals, a simmering stew on a charcoal fire.  Green valleys, black hills, clear blue skies. Cees is sensitive enough not to show them all to us. He is but one of the many millions of people possessing Ipads, smartphones or what have you got for information storing gadgets.

One death is a tragedy a thousands deaths are statistics. Quantity changes quality. That goes for pictures too. The rare pictures of long gone relatives are interesting like that of my fathers father and -mother in the Dutch East Indies.

As I write this a tweet comes by saying: Not long ago your aunt would show a map with photos. Two rolls at the max. Now she has an iPad with 6000 photos

Multiply the images that are thus recorded by millions and you get some scope of the growing data-mountain that awaits our children. The urge to record what we observe leaves us with a pile of digital excrement.

I don’t use the word excrement offhandedly. The use of images in our daily life has become overwhelming. On Facebook for instance people share more and more photo’s, pictures, drawings, paintings and cartoons not made by themselves.

My Facebook friend Ruth shows a photo of a glacier hemmed in between huge rocks. I like it and share it on my page soon to see that Dorith likes it too and has shared it on her page. No sooner have I registered this or I forget it because of an other picture that begs sharing. A cat dangling from the head of a huge and friendly dog. And this in less than two minutes.  

These are pictures you don’t keep. As yet the capacity for information-storage is growing but the supply-side is growing at an even greater speed.  The need to order these data will soon become pressing as the question arises what to do with this bewildering amount of personally gathered data. A question that confronts me as I’m sorting out the color-slides of Chantal.

12) Don’t search too hard, you might find more than you hoped for

12) Don’t search too hard, you might find more than you hoped for

Vacuum-cleaning I look under my desk. Two big, red cardboard boxes. A fraction of a second I don’t know what is inside or why they stand there. Then I remember they contain photos, hundreds of them. They too await ordering, to be  cataloged, a text to be added.

Warning! Don’t look into these boxes with old pictures. If you find them you find stacks of them. On some of these pictures of people whose identity is impossible to determine. Sending you head on to a new track of information gathering. Or you know who it is but you know next to nothing of this person.

Take the mother of my maternal grandmother, my great grandmother, Jeannet Hülliger. With her slightly slanted eyes, a brooch in the form of a miniature Javanese keris and her high cheekbones she shows all the indications of a mixed racial parentage. Grandma ‘Moes’ as she was called and off you go, surfing the Internet for information about great-grandma Moes.

Loathing and disgust fill my heart as I come to understand how much work there is to be done if I were to take my quest serious. Great-grandma Moes has a Swiss name, Hülliger and she marries someone who is also of Swiss origin, Alphons de Sturler. Was he a pure bred European? Or was he also of Eurasian extraction?

When I finish my project I must write a book about the do’s and don’ts of neatly storing and labelling the images of your life.

The pictures that I make after September 1999 - the month that Marike and I meet -  don’t pose a problem as Marike can select and arrange them. Mostly they show her, her being pregnant, her becoming more and more pregnant and finally our first born Mijntje. To a lesser extend the same happens be it less documented when Maike is due to arrive. I also make a short sequence of our baby-boy who was aborted due to an affliction called acephaly. His skull didn’t close and his brains dissolved.

More in the realm of fun-pictures are the ones we make in Madeira where we stay in what is for me by far the nicest hotel I have ever visited. It is an old building that stands on a hill. To reach the entrance you walk through a garden full of Angel Trumpets. From the dining room you have a captivating view of the capital Funchal.  Aside from the romantic surroundings the paint is fading, water-pipes are rusty and the sink smells. The owner tells us it is probably the last season she can exploit the hotel. She is too old to continue and nobody wants to take it over.  

The street leading to the hotel is so steep that we walk it back to back as Marike has become absurdly big. I push her upwards walking backwards. It is a way to get attention indeed.

Photographs are a seductive lot. I have a few empty photo-albums so I could start pasting them into the album. First sorting them out year by year, then from month to month. Afterwards I will start with the slides. Postponing is a appealing strategy.

My good friend Cees visits us and I tell him about my problem which slides to keep and which to destroy. Cees, Chantal and I have been in Flores 1984. He asks me: ‘Remember that time our bus was stuck because a bridge was broken?’ 

Accidentally I have seen a picture of a exuberantly painted bus on Flores and local guys dragging around logs. He continues: ‘We had befriended an Englishman and we have a discussion about the art of travelling looking at these guys trying to repair the bridge. Like even if they cannot fend the bridge and we will not be able to arrive at our intended destination, we still have enjoy travelling.’ I remember the broken bridge, but the Briton? No. These boxes also are full of forgotten memories.

11) The sin that does not materialize

The sin that does not materialize

Back to the slides, Ponza 1984 for sure this time. Ponza is a small island in the Thyrrenian Sea west of Italy, situated roughly between Rome and Naples.

The few things Chantal and Marike have in common are their love for Italy and their capacity to speak Italian like a native. Travelling with your personal interpreter is a sheer delight. It opens hidden doors like when we ask an old lady in a remote mountain village “Do you know a place where we can have some coffee here?” She smiles and answers: “At my home of course”.  We cannot leave without a bag full of homemade cookies.

Italians contrary to Frenchmen, in my experience, are social and talkative, especially towards attractive ladies. Another thing Chantal and Marike have in common. So there we are waiting on a platform of Roma Termini Station when an old gentleman approaches us. Where do we go to? Ponza? What a pity you are leaving Rome now as a great tenor will sing in the opera house.

Another gentleman passes by and overhearing the name of the tenor mingles in the discussion saying “and what a pity he won’t sing the aria from” he names an opera of Verdi. The first gentleman agrees and all of a sudden both men burst into singing. Afterwards they salute each other and us and go their separate ways. Two young Italians also heading for Ponza grin and say: ‘This is Italy’.

The slides only show us sunbathing.

It shows also on one slide behind me part of a young man. The guy we have met in Roma Termini Station. He is travelling with his niece, a gorgeous looking girl. When we finally arrive in Ponza and find a hotel after a long and hot day Chantal is so tired she goes to bed immediately. As I stand in our corridor the girl from Termini Station enters our hotel-room. She leans against the wall and sighs with her eyes closed and lips half open.

I am in my swimming trunks and she is in bikini. I am upset as I am afraid she will faint. But when she opens her eyes after a few seconds she appears to be angry and leaves without a word.

10) The things we use

10) The things we use

Back to the slides. What have I got here? On the slide rail that says ‘Gran Canaria’ I’m confronted by a riddle. The first slide shows a tent in mountainous terrain, high tops in the far distance and among huge boulders our tent. One of our tents, the Fjällraven, beautiful tent, sturdy, easy to set up, spacey, but heavy. How does it end up in the mountains? As far as my memory will allow me to travel we use the small and lightweight Eureka Moonshadow when walking in the mountains.

The sight of the tent makes me realize equipment is important. Don’t show the surroundings, don’t show the view from a summit. Show the things you use, the jacket you wear, your headgear. What kind of stove to cook on. Things that get outdated but are considered top of the bill when you use them. All of a sudden I see we camped long before fleece or goretex became commonplace.

Did we use the Fjällraven before the Moonshadow? Then the trek must have been quite strenuous indeed.

But is it really Gran Canaria?

After the mountains we see a gentle slope with a primitive church and a lady leading a small herd of cows along a narrow path through a pine forest. This can easily be a picture made somewhere in the Alps.

Another indication of time is the map. Chantal reads a map that looks like a photocopy. Wish I could see that map. In the beginning of our travels maps were a problem. Hard to come by and expensive. Sometimes we use photocopies instead. But what strikes me is her backpack. That’s the one I carried in Indonesia in 1978.

It is a cross between a suitcase and a backpack, more a bag then a backpack. The fibre is cordura and it has lots of zips. We think we will look less like hippies in Indonesia if we carry this bag because you can hide the straps and let it look like a respectable suitcase. With a lot of fantasy that is. Back to the slides:

A meandering river in a caldeira?

A view from a window?

An ass standing in front of a church?

Where or when did we take these pictures?

Their maybe an answer to that.

Chantal leaves me with a stack of diaries. Next to an avid photographer she is a meticulous reporter. Her writings can shed light on a lot of these slides. The letters she writes me I keep and I have no problem reading her handwriting. But as yet I cannot set myself to read her diaries.

They are not meant for me. Notes for your diary are letters to yourself. They are hers. For her eyes only. That shows I’m not a detached historian of my life. With diaries from somebody-else I will not have these qualms.

I must admit. I once leafed through a diary. It is the diary of Evelyn. After I have found her in our apartment with her arm in a bucket of water and blood. It is a cry for help I cannot prevent nor answer. Her older brother comes to our place and takes her home. A week later he fetches her belongings. He forgets her diaries. They are in the bookcase.  Only when he ask me for them do I see them. I cannot resist leaving through them. To my horror I am not mentioned once.

Is it because of the slides? I don’t know, but I dream of Chantal. We are travelling and she has to get out of the train. I lose sight of her and have to continue travelling on my own. It is inconvenient and I feel abandoned. But I feel also a consolation as I know I will see her again at the end of the trip.

9) Diaries closed with a moral key

9) Diaries closed with a moral key

But again what do I want to show my children? Okay, that a life without them can be rewarding. Sure I was happy with Chantal. I mean, look at our faces. There we are in the middle of nowhere miles and miles away from any human activity. Tremendous views and not a living soul as far as the eye reaches.

But how can I convey the happiness of walking?

To start with nothing can surpass the peace in the pace of walking. The distance that comes slowly nearer showing more and more details. What appears to be barren slowly sprouts stunted trees, bushes, grassy knolls. What is forbidden from afar becomes habitable  and at last you see signs of life. You see mountain groundhogs, birds and the occasional mountain-goat.

Walking is caressing the earth with your feet. The imperceptible changes in the landscape that prepare you for bigger boulders and steep ravines. The colour of far away mountain-flanks hints at scree and the danger of sprained ankles.

How I can long for these walks still. The days filled with little pains and huge rewards. The lingering fear that a pain hidden in my ankle will make walking impossible. A fear that will be forgotten when later on a nagging pain behind my left knee evolves. Later in the afternoon still a hip-joint from which a sudden jolt disturbs me.

All discomforts of walking surpassed by itching under my cap. But all is forgotten when we find a secluded camping-site and set up our tent. After topping our meal with coffee we fall into the blissful abyss of painless sleep.

8) Remember the first turn

8) Remember the first turn

Switzerland 1969 sees me walking for the first time in mountainous terrain. Not with Chantal but with another girlfriend, Evelyn. My life with Chantal is still years away. After the very first day of walking I can hardly breath because of severe chest-pain.

I’m bred on the flatlands of Holland. A hill of three-hundred metres is called a mountain here. Switzerland offers the uninitiated nightmares. Every time we reach a slope that seems to disappear in an abyss I hold my breath. That fear hits me so often that it causes muscle pain in the end. I won’t admit it but I suffer from fear of heights.

On black and white photo’s you can see Evelyn and me roped together crossing a glacier somewhere in either Switzerland or France. Pickax sunk firmly in the snow, crampons under our boots, almost hugging the treacherous snow you can see us climb to a top.

Later still it is Annet with whom I go mountain walking. The fear of heights is still with me. I remember vividly that sinking feeling once in France as I see in the far distance our route carved into a mountain. A thin line incredible high above the valley. A path without any safety measures.

From that period few pictures remain. I find a picture of a temporary settlement of tents. Our tent farthest away. The tent into which Annet sees a viper slithering. Had she not seen him we would have gone to bed with the animal between our improvised pillows.

What will my girls think when they see Evelyn on a glacier or Annet sitting on a rock? They won’t recognize me as the pictures show me with long hair. I have hair in the first place! I have a drooping moustache and a tuft of hair under my lower lip. Later with Annet there appears an enormous bush of hair both on top of my head and among my mouth. Your face has to be hairy in the 60s and 70s. It shows you are left-wing, anti-establishment and probably a user of soft drugs.

Of course I’m glad to have these pictures. But the girls cannot possibly appreciate them the way I do. Forgetting for a minute the political and cultural context, I see the investment, the choices I have made.

Traversing a glacier for the first time can be the beginning of serious mountaineering. I learn rope tricks with which to help someone out of a crevasse, techniques to carry a friend with a broken leg and how to use your ice-axe as a brake. On the first mountain-pictures I am still on the threshold for more ambitious expeditions to  ‘four-thousanders’ as the beginning of the serious mountain-range is called. 
But one day in the French Alps we reach a mountain-hut near the summit of a mountain. We have walked all day, rain has found us and we are frozen when we enter the hut. There is already a company of mountaineers   when we arrive. French tour-guides and their clients, a boisterous group. Two things stand out immediately. Their gear is new and expensive. Bulky down-coats in blistering colours, the newest fashion in trousers and bodywarmers but it is not their gear that sets us apart. We are still walking in cotton T-shirts, baggy trousers or jeans cut at the knee. It is the way they look at us, their condescending stare that makes me realize mountain climbers look down upon other people. I choose the mountains not higher than three kilometres as the limit of my aspiration.

Even if it does limit your scope of climbing, basically you choose walking over climbing, it opens a still dazzling array of walking possibilities. But of course helping Evelyn out of a crevasse I don’t realize I jot out the Himalayas.

With Annet in the seventies I start to explore the Grande Randonnées of France. Almost no picture survives this period. Other people make pictures of us and sometime send them to us. No color-slides fortunately. Peace fills my heart as I don’t have to make choices what to keep and what to destroy.