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Memories of India: visual diary entry

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The photos in this post aren’t all my favourites, nor the best from their sets, but what I could easily, without placing too much attachment on perfection, upload to share some of the scenes I lived within, for a brief moment in time.

DSC_0556{above : an average street scene in Mysore, India.}

DSC_0788{above : a large pebble rock, on top of one of the hills I climbed, unfortunately I am not sure if this was during a temple visit near Mysore or later in Hampi, India.}

DSC_0870{above : an average street scene in Mysore, India.}

DSC_0581{above : an unusually quiet street scene in Mysore, India.}

DSC_0577{above : a typical street vendor in Mysore, selling household goods, India.}

DSC_0562-2DSC_0570_2DSC_0460DSC_0458DSC_0575_2DSC_0576-2DSC_0170{above: photograph from a trip we took to Bylakuppe, Tibetan Settlement, 3-4 hours by bus from Mysore, India}

DSC_0174_2{above: photograph from a trip we took to Bylakuppe, Tibetan Settlement, 3-4 hours by bus from Mysore, India}

DSC_0243{street scene from Mysore: Man helping himself to water and struggling turning the tap off again}DSC_0245{street scene from Mysore: Man helping himself to water and struggling turning the tap off again}

DSC_0425{just a car I saw in Mysore}

DSC_0445{Somewhere on a residential street in Mysore I ran into a goat herder and her goats, it was an odd encounter and I couldn’t tell if we were making friends or if I was bothering her. But I loved the goats. This one was held to keep still for my photograph. Something I am not sure I would have subjected the goat to, if the goat herder hadn’t insisted..}

Anticipating the next stop on the life journey

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It is a sunday afternoon, time is closing in and once again feeling limited. Our 6 months in England (for me interspersed with a stay at an Artist Residency Program in Finland) is drawing to it’s close. The time was just long enough to recover from the extremities of Adrenal Fatigue. This is something they don’t tell you in other places: traversing the globe, surviving in far away places can take it’s toll on health; sometimes in a profound way..

But here I am, more or less put back together, the fractals reorganised into a comprehensive shape that somewhat resembles myself as I remember her.. Yes, it feels so long ago that I was last settled in one piece that I am no longer even sure the complete ‘me’ ever existed. But I do recall that in summer 2007 I felt: “I am whole in myself’. Just before a forest fire descended on my life. This is about 9 years ago! Incredible. The time. Can it be this long!? How did I survive this turbulence for so long?

The story is too long for this occasion. But it certainly was a forest fire.

Well.. California is awaiting my arrival and I best begin to tidy my things, pack my bags, bring my provisions and make sure that inspiration doesn’t go missing along the way.

These past weeks I have had so, so many ideas for projects. All I will need is a little money to realise them.

I have been so worried about the future that I put a hold on my life as an artist and tried other things. In retrospect: there is no future proofing way, except the complete abandonment of my soul into an office job that will feed the body but drain the soul. Is that life?

Am I risking a complete disaster of poverty? I think the honest answer is yes I am. It requires a lot of courage and an ounce of stupidity probably, to follow the heart anyway.

Follow the heart is overused and used too lightly. My heart has been through a lot of trials and tribulations, hardships and pains. Does the world need another artists?

How to answer that question because one can equally ask: does the world really need another arms dealer? Another pesticide producer? Another plastic toy manufacturer.. No, it does not. We are curious creatures us humans. Does the world need another human? Probably not and still we are here.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could come to terms with the fears of failure, the fears of poverty, the fears of pain and death and then get on with living this temporary life; the end of which nobody escapes.

Finding peace and acceptance within can be the only  treasure we get to take with us to the final moments..

 

 

Caring for body & soul

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I finally made steps to return to my routine of caring better for my soul. Fruit feasts make me happy. And I took some time off social duties this weekend to allow the soul to dangle.

It truly is mind boggling to me how easy it is to let one’s habits slip. Or rather to get into the habit of not keeping up the little daily routines that help feed the body and soul and really make a profound difference in my life.   

 

I don’t know about everybody else but it is shocking how the inner laze-ball-stressball gets the better of me and my life and I blink and it’s been months since I last had a giant fruit salad! I used to make them every morning when I was unwell with joint inflammations in 2009. Eating a diet that supported my body’s healing process really did make a profound impact and I recovered beyond my own expectations.

But that’s another story. Really I just wanted an excuse to share my fruit salad pictures with you and inspire anybody reading this to go hunt down some fruit and make your own. Your body will thank you so much. Imagine you are eating sunshine in a bowl (less hot obviously).

 

California I am coming home…

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It is definite! It is official! California I am coming home! (reference Joni Mitchell…)
June 9th is my planned date for travel!

We have a place to get started in San Francisco.
I have a US job offer with healthcare.. (small job but it’s a blessing, it will bring dependable income while I promote my Art work)

If this goes well then we are looking at a good second half to 2016, a year that started with a lot of hurdles and some falls..

There is something auspicious about this period of time in our lives. 7 short months ago I left California broken and dispirited. It took me all this long time to heal, regroup and gain urgently needed clarity. The twists and turns that life takes are incredible.

 


My home has found a fellow German to live in it during my absence.

What drives me to brave exposing myself to the harshness of life in America once more? None of the cozy social security systems that prop up so many artists in Europe. None of the security net. A climate that I experienced as outright hostile and yet …how to explain the magnetism it holds over me?

I am hungry for the air that you can only breathe in California. One day I will try and explain, find words for how different light can be in different places. Something I struggled to understand in my early 20’s when I began my career in the Arts. Light was light was light. Today I know that I knew nothing!

It was incomprehensible to me how, just how different climate can feel on the skin and in the soul. Who could have explained to me the taste of air in different cities on different continents? Some things have to be experienced, there just is no other way.
‪#‎California‬ ‪#‎SanFrancisco‬

sheep drawings

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DSC_9502-2

Everybody is very keen to hear how this fascination with portrait drawings of sheep began.. Let’s just say: Haruki Murakami was a big inspiration. Have your read his book: “A Wild Sheep Chase”? It somehow formed the literary soundtrack for my second journey to India. Part surreal, part real.

It never rains in Northern California…

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…. at all.
It’s day after day sunshine here. It is definitely very tantalising and the flavour of opportunities around the corner is everywhere. In our case without a car we can’t really reach them because it is true, America is a car culture and you better have a car here or be limited but the opportunities are there.
There is a distinctly different attitude here to everything. An optimism that I am always trying to understand the origin of.
For example in real terms being poor here sucks more than In the UK even (!) thanks to this culture of ‘the individual’ this mentality that creates and progresses SO much “everyone out for themselves: ready, steady, go” but it leaves one a bit by the wayside when in the UK (up until ‘Cameron the Coldhearted Opportunist’ came into power) and Europe there would be some support to helps bridges gaps until one can gain a foothold again.
This here really is not a model I would follow if I had a say over government policy BUT the attitude here is infectious and it is remarkable to find so much optimism in the place where despondency would be in the UK.
Is it just the weather in California? Or is this a nationwide attitude? Still trying to learn how the Americans tick. It is really interesting to pay attention to all the ways in which here is substantially different while looking so much like home. The minds play different.
You can tell I am nibbling on these cultural anthropological ponderings trying to work out the origin of the flavours and what they all mean.
This period of time spent here has been really interesting, despite me not being able to get out very much the pet-sitting gigs and effectively living other people’s lives for periods of time, the living among glassblowers, the reading forums on San Francisco Newspapers (devoid of flower power voices I can tell you!) all this is beginning to give me a sense of Americans and how they might look the same as Europeans but really are not. I am fascinated by how we are so different.
I have a love hate relationship with here, it is tantalising to think about staying and hard to think about the different colours of England that once I am there I adore (the wetness, the green-ness, the wintery-barren-ness, the narrowness of streets)

Petsitting in Bernal Heights

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After being told that this cat didn’t like being petted and that she is rather moody I was ready for snappy attitudes and a lot of aloof ignoring. Yet within days she was purring on my lap, sleeping in my arm and resting her paws on my right arm as I typed emails and social media posts.. We made best friends!

And this just has to be one of the coolest cats that I have every had the pleasure to be friends with! I teasingly called her ‘Zippy’ because I (wrongly) assumed that she would be slow and laid back.. Instead she had so much beans and it was a lot of fun seeing her chase invisible mice from time to time and bounce up and down the bed. I truly fell in love with ‘Zippy’. If we had a San Francisco home of our own, an owned one, I would have pleaded with her family to allow her to come and live with me. What a super, super cat!

Daisy the dog was much more difficult to please. I took her dog treat shopping, offered any treats to her hearts desires but her love could not be bought. This was a prime example of a truly loyal dog heart!

 

 

Where can we go from here?

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Our housesitting appointment is drawing to a close at the end of the coming week. We by chance got asked to take on another house-pet-sitting gig from the 1st – 4th of August and I said yes minutes before I found out that we likely have lost the (stationary) RV that we were schedule to move into that weekend. So that was a lucky decision.

It leaves a rather big question, especially considering that this is the Bay Area with incredibly high rental costs: where do we go from there? We have a grace period of another 9 days or so before I really have no idea where we will go.

I had this wild idea of buying a school bus as an art-workshop venue, I prefer to teach lessons and classes in small settings rather than bigger ones, even if I take a pay-cut as a result. I had come up with a school bus when I couldn’t think of anywhere where I could teach, especially with me being new to the area I just don’t have the connections and networks to help out. The drawback is this: I think I am just not ready to spend borrowed money on investing in a project in a place where in my heart of hearts I don’t feel connection to or sufficient trust in. What shall I do?

I have a job-interview tomorrow with http://www.verlocal.com, which is an Airbnb type set-up but for activities. I should present some class ideas and of course also have a location that I can teach them from. Right now I have no idea which way to decide. I can not think of another option than a school bus for a venue and yes for a temporary place to sleep. (At night we would easily park it on the grounds of the studio where both Jason and I have a small storage/art studio space rented and where J makes his blown glass – the studio space is too dark and small and not suitable to give art classes for me)