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I live, I love, I create, I capture, I learn, I enjoy.

In May...

Roeland and I went to the Nico Tinbergenlezing with some friends of his. We heard Rivke Jaffe speak about different groups in neoliberal society taking care of security, and Steven Pinker spoke about the history of violence (stating that the rate of violence has gone down over the centuries and has never before been as low as it is in our times). Somewhat out of my zone of interest, but I had it on good authority that I shouldn't miss out on this. Pinker referred to Hobbes and Kant, and, indirectly, to Hegel, which made it more interesting to me. Drinks afterwards. I really need to cut down on the amount of hot chocolate I'm downing these days!

A. and I went to the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht. Happy elephants, medieval art, Russian art, Sol Lewitt-vertigo, great art-historical discoveries concerning Italian baby Jesusses from around 1400AC wearing necklaces with red pendants of blood coral, sitting outside in the sun with a nice view of the river and the city and most of all lots of jokes and fun.

Maarten and I went to see Thérèse Desqueyroux. Good film but quite depressing. Milkshake/icecream afterwards.

I attended a study day for art history in The Hague, following our docent around town, with visits to Gallerij Willem V and Museum Bredius and inbetween, a quiet lunch on my own along the Hofvijver, with the sun and my sunflower-spread, chicken and cucumber sandwiches, a huge fish swimming in the pond, birds, tourists and a little ant that was trying to figure out how to transport the large crumb I sheared with him.

Later that day I travelled to Utrecht where I met up with Roeland for a Studium Generale lecture on the finding of truth and the mistakes you can make whilst doing that, by Herman Philipse. You can listen to it here, it's in Dutch and focusses on the role the finding of truth has in the judicial system. Which made it somewhat uninteresting for me, unfortunately.

Dinner at VIP in The Hague and the oh, so stupid silly bad movie '21 and over' (not even posting a trailer!) during the monthly filmnight with some of my movie mates. Good laughs and lots of facepalms.

Rob and I went to Museum Catharijneconvent, where we saw the exhibition Divine Inspiration and part of the medieval collection.
I spent the evening at the cinema with Roeland, where we saw 'La Religieuse', based on a book by Diderot. click here to see a trailer (French with Dutch subs).

A day out in Delft with Maarten.

Maarten cut my hair, as usual. But he cut off more than he was supposed to. And then he had to cut it some more to get it done straight. And now I can only just make a pony tail... Fortunately, hair grows ;-)

I visited my grandparents on the occasion of (grand ;-))mother's day.

I gave my very first short lecture for my student coöperation. They were kind to me, it was good practise ;-) I spoke (or rather, read my text out loud: I didn't have time for a lot of practise, and even if I had, my ME might be pretty mild these days compared to how it used to be, but memorizing stuff like that is still very difficult for me.) about the attribution of 'The Fishing Party' (De Vispartij), a coloured drawing owned by the Louvre, to Jan van Eyck by Claudine Chavannes-Mazel.
Roeland and A. were there to cheer me on (much appreciated!). After my lecture, someone else gave a long lecture about her experiences with running a printing business for students and protest groups in 1970's and early 1980's Leiden. Afterwards I joined some fellow students at a café for drinks.

Testruns with Meermannians of the code for the digital newsletter I wrote, it was fun to see them starting to put what I made to use! At the end of the month it premiered when we used it for the June newsletter.

Francien and I went to the Salon de Museologie in Amsterdam. The topic was the use of new media in museums (social media, interactives...). Interesting!

I attended two tours of the Rijksmuseum with fellow students. One on the building, and one on a couple of the most important/interesting works of art they have. Saw most of the museum this time, but mostly in passing, I'll have to go back to have a proper look at things!

Leo and I had a nice stroll along a stream (de Mark) and trough a forest south of Breda. We also visited the city center and the Grote Kerk (Large Church) and sampled some of Breda's café's. Click here to see the route.

I attended a monthly gathering at a café in Leiden and went to see Roeland afterwards to watch 'The Age of Innocence' together.

I joined a quest trough Leiden, where teams had to solve puzzles to learn the route and to accumulate scorepoints. It was pouring but we had lots of fun and got a shared 3rd place out of ten. Fun to get a new perspective on some parts of Leiden this way! It's one of my favourite cities.

I attended a study day in Utrecht, it was a meeting for art history at the Centraal Museum. Fun!

Nice and relevant illustrations on the floors here and there. A nice way to spruce things up and attract interest.

The installation Pretty Vacant by design bureau Rietveld Landscape

A maquette by Rietveld

Roeland and I had dinner at Eazie and went to the cinema to see Hannah Arendt.

B. was asking if anyone wanted to join him in attending a monthly games night. I was game so we drove to Den Hoorn, where we met three ladies with whom we played Machiavelli and Take Five. Fun!

Maarten, my cousin R. and I spent an afternoon preparing our grandparent's livingroom to be painted (Maarten and two of my cousins did the painting the next day). It was a fulfillment of a long standing promise we made opa and oma as a present for their 60th wedding anniversary. Their 62th wedding anniversary will be this summer ;-)

Using the blender to make bright green healthy stuff.

I went to the last day of the course on making magazines, it was very enjoyable and I learned a lot.

I organized a raffle at Meermanno, the prizes consisting of all sorts of presents given to our employees by business relations. Someone had been collecting them for quite some time but no one had gotten around to organize the raffle before. Some of the objects were really nice, others totally silly. I made numbered packages of them, corresponding with the amount of contestants, and had them draw numbers from a hat. It was a fun and festive teabreak!

Roeland and I had dinner together and attended a studium generale lecture at the study center of the open university in The Hague. Prof. dr. Paul van den Akker spoke about the influence of old painting art on modern photography. Unfortunately he had a different definition of 'old' art than I do, but it was interesting never the less. Fun with fellow students.

I visited Museum Boijmans van Beuningen to have a good look at the early 14th century ivory triptych on which I had to give a short talk the next week. Off course I had to pay a quick visit to the only Jan van Eyck in a Dutch collection...

Geplaatst op 19-06-2013.
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Bruges & Ghent Day 3

We visited a bookmarket with lots of books on art in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. Travelling with a bookjunkie meant a short stroll along the stalls, which resulted in bumping into my 'boss' Maartje, the director of Museum Meermanno. We chatted for a bit and then Roeland and I headed into the museum.

The Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck is currently undergoing restauration. This is being done in a workshop behind a glass window at the Museum of Fine Arts. Since it was sunday, no one was working, but the outer panels were displayed near the window for a good view. I had seen them before, during my visit to St. Baafs Cathedral in 2008, but now I had a better view and added knowledge from my studies. I spent as much time in the room (with just a quick break to see the older works of the collection, which I had seen before in early 2012) as Roeland needed to see all of the permanent collection of the museum :-)
They're removing a layer of varnish that was applied during a restoration in 1950 and in some places the pigments have to be fixated. The restoration offers a chance to do extensive research with all kinds of techniques, as did the research that was done to determine whether a restoration was neccesary and if so, to what extend.
Part of the panels that were on view show an annunciation scene, and after spending quite some time in awe in front of Jan van Eycks Annunciation in the exhibition 'The Road to Van Eyck' in Boijmans last winter I looked at this scene with a different eye than I did before. This annunciation is set inside a bourgeois house, while the other (painted 2-4 years after the Ghent Altarpiece was finished) is situated in a church. Gabriel's face has some likeness with his other self, but he's less of the shy, blushing youngling. Maria isn't as pretty, she looks like the singing angels in the upper register of the inner panels. Her shoulders seem odd. Here, too, the words she speaks are placed upside down, showning that they are meant for god above. The holy ghost, in the form of a dove, is large and almost lands on her head. The scene is depicted in less detail, but still, WOW! Lots of folds in their clothing, which is clearly made of a different kind of fabric than that of donor Joost Vijdt on one of the other panels. Usually Gabriel and Maria are seperated by two narrow panels showing more of the interior, it was interesting to see them placed closer together. The infrared photo's show that the orinigal form of the upper part of windows in the annunciation scene was different, more elaborate, I wonder if this suggests that the original intent was a church-like setting after all. I wonder why the ceiling beam on Maria's side has a corbel at the end while the one on Gabriel's side doesn't.
The donors are clearly individuals, althoug depicted in less detail than Joris van der Paele with his wrinkles (who dates from a few years after the Ghent Alterpiece was finished). I really enjoy being able to compare Van Eyck's works like this!
The shadow of the lamb's nose on John the Baptist's shoulder...
I can't wait to see what restauration will do to the colours! Right now, the colours are more muted than they used to be, they will look more clear when the restauration is finished. Now that the varnish has been removed, the contrasts and shadows are clearer. Some damage is showing, mostly along the edges. They plan to finish the restoration in October 2017, I'm hoping to visit the workshop a couple more times in the upcoming years when they are working on other panels and to actually see people in action.

Outside, the weather was nice. We got some bread and some ham and turkey and made ourselves sandwiches, sitting on a bench in the sun with a view of St. Peters Abbey. After lunch it was time to visit one of my favorite places in Ghent: chocolatebar Quetzal, where we sipped from cups filled with (barely) liquid heaven. Ohhhh, yeah! ;-)

We walked around the city center for a while and got Wilma some birthdaypresents at the nice giftshop of the Huis van Alijn.

Mrs. van Eyck was visiting Ghent as well...

Then we visited the Caermensklooster, where an exhibition is held about the restauration of the Ghent Altarpiece. Historical and technical information, a real size infrared scan of the altar piece, and models and plans for how to exhibit the altar piece after restauration. Nice! Some of the plans speak of taking the altar piece apart and showing them seperately from each other within one exhibition space. Yikes! I'm not a fan of that!

Last time I visited Ghent, this was being built, it was a bit of a surprise to find it completed. Not sure what to think of it...

We walked to the St. Baafs, where there was still time for a quick visit to the . It was great to see it again, I'm curious to see it change over the next couple of years!
We did a quick round of the rest of the cathedral and then headed for the trainstation. Full trains and a delay on our way home, dinner at Antwerp Central Station.
What a great weekend, filled with Jan van Eyck, Roeland, Hans Memling, chocolate... ;-) I had a really good time!

More on the Ghent Altarpiece:
Filmed items on the restoration
The closest look you'll ever get

The photo of me with hot chocolate was taken by Roeland, the rest by me

Geplaatst op 26-05-2013.
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Bruges & Ghent Day 2

The last room we saw in the museum was a sort of chapel, connected to the church of our lady, with windows allowing us to look into the interior of the church. We decided on a visit to the church. It was worth while, despite renovations and damaged paintings. We saw the Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo and the tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles the Bold (Karel de Stoute).

The window between the Gruuthusemuseum and the church.

We paused outside for a bit. There are groups of tourists everywhere, many of them wearing headphones and following a tourguide. Museum employees and such keep adressing us in English, even when we try to tell them we're Dutch; another sign of Bruges being a popular tourist destination.

Roeland told me he's never met anyone who takes this many photo's of herself ;-)

We visited St. Johns Hospital, especially worth while because of several paintings by Hans Memling. After entering we found ourselves in a large open plan exhibition room. It used to be filled with rows of beds. The room is sort of partitioned with showcases and movable walls , that way the visitor follows a route along objects having to do with the history of the hospital and art, ending amongst a worthwhile collection of Memling's works. The information signs have no less than five languages.

On our way back to the hotel we got a cupcake at 'Heavenly cakes' and some proper lunch-foods at the supermarket. We had lunch in our room and rested for a while.

We had hoped to visit the Belfry but the line was way too long to our liking, so we popped into the chapel of the holy blood for a quick visit and then saw the (mostly neo-)gothic town hall. I had seen both before, in late 2002, but my studies make them more interesting now.

The chapel of the holy blood:

Town Hall:

This trip's activities evolved mainly around Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling and Gruuthuse, so it was appropriate to find them on the walls of the hall ;-)

We had some great hot chocolate, spent a while in a comicbook store and then went on a walk, seeing, amongst other places, the Minnewaterpark and the Begijnhof. In the church at the Begijnhof, a church service was carried out; singing ladies in habits, it was like stepping into living history.

A sign outside the store said 'taste the best hot chocolate', to which we happily obliged!

Begijnhof:

Pointing at the belfry we didn't climb.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant and went to sleep early, tired after a full day of art and history!

Most photo's taken by me, the one of me photographing myself was taken by Roeland

Geplaatst op 21-05-2013.
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Bruges & Ghent Day 1

On 26 April Roeland and I travelled to Bruges, where we spent the weekend. We stayed at the Bauhaus budget hotel. It's a hostel with some rooms with private bathroom. The room was well sized and we had a nice view over roofs and churches. We weren't so lucky with our noisy young neighbours staying at the lower floors of our building, though, they woke us up several times.

So what do chocoholics do as soon as they arrive in Bruges? Hot chocolate, baby, yeah! ;-)

After checking into the hotel we headed for the Groeningemuseum. Very little information on the wall signs. We spent most of our time with the older paintings in the collection. Lots of old masters, such a treat to see them! The works of Jan van Eyck had my special attention: Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele and Portrait of Margaret van Eyck. I had seen them before, in early 2011, but with added knowledge and time spent with other works of Jan van Eyck I get so much more out of looking at them now than I did then! Oh, those details! To fall in love with! The softness of the velvet, the shine on the golden embroidery. Joris' wrinkles, and his book! Margaret is pretty much neglected by most tourists, Joris gets all their attention. Is that why she seems slightly sad? The details of the upper part of her lace head dress, the fur lining of her dress that just asks to be stroked! The shine on the band around her waist...
I also enjoyed the works by Hans Memling. Maria's hair on his annunciation looks so soft, it makes me wonder what shampoo she uses...

We took a little detour on our way back to the hotel, sampled a few of the second hand stores on 'our' street to check out the books, and had a short break.

This dog was laying in the window opening or inside the window most of the times we walked past. The people across the water-and-street have stuck a life-sized sticker of a small dog against their window, as a little friend for him to look at. Sweet!

Early in the evening we headed for the concertgebouw. We had hot chocolate/soup to warm us up (it was chilly!) and attended a concert with music from the Gruuthuse manuscript. The group performing is called Clubmediéval. They don't seem to have a website of their own bus you can like them on facebook. They used medieval types of instruments and took turns in singing, and sometimes sang together. Above the stage the text of the songs that were beging played was projected: on one screen pages from the manuscript, on the screen next to it a modern translation. Loved it!

Not all musicians were on stage at this point, but Roeland pointed out to me that I had missed a very huge, obvious sign saying photography wasn't allowed, so I didn't get any photo's of all of them together.

Most photo's taken by me, a few by Roeland

Geplaatst op 18-05-2013.
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In April...

Our guests went a little overboard in their chocolaty generousity... ;-)

Wilma and Fred brought us this huge, silly fellow. He's still sitting on the kitchen counter, but we ate his little friends ;-)

On the second day of April I came down with a cold, bleh! I toughened up and went to Amsterdam, where Roeland and I had dinner at the public library and went to an evening with lectures and discussions on looking at art.

My salad for dinner at La Place in the library.

And how about that view from the roof terrace?!

I spent the rest of the week in bed, missing out on working at Meermanno, a bar visit, a film marathon and Leo's white chocolate cake birthday party. I did, however, attend skype meetings from my bed (no rest for the wicked!) and Roeland came over for hot chocolate. Out of necessity, Maarten's cooking skills got some practise. I got around to doing some writing for the blog and sorting trough some photo's, since my head was way to fuzzy for studying.

Still loving that blender! Daily fruitshakes to fight my cold!

E's computer was giving her a hard time, which meant she keeps getting kicked out of our skype meetings. At some point I was talking on the phone to E. and over skype to other E. and passing messages. Not very practical but a bit comical.

The latest issue of our magazine.

So many beautiful skies that month that I'll give them a post of their own.

After almost a week I was fed up with laying in bed. I felt somewhat better and didn't want to miss out on any more fun things.

Roeland and I went to a lecture art the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden about the new permanent exhibition on the near east.

I attended a study day for art history in Den Haag, spent an hour shopping (not in vain, so it was worth the effort), had dinner at the Filmhuis (I like their goat cheese salad) with two fun fellow goofballs (I'm not allowed to show a photo of the three of us wearing 3D-glasses so you'll have to make do with just me) and saw pretty much the most horrible movie ever (although some of the absurdness in it was, in a way, comical).

I went to work for the first time in a couple of weeks, fortunately they still recognized me and let me in and I could make myself useful.

I attended a conference on woodcut in incunabula at the KB. To my pleasant surprise several fellow Meermannians were there as well. The conference ended with the opening of an accompanying exhibition at Museum Meermanno.

I mumbled goodbye to Maarten, who left at five in the morning for a 3-day trip to the north of France.

Roeland and I went to the Rijksmuseum on the day it opened, I blogged about it here.

I attended and enjoyed Roeland's birthday party.

I walked from Amersfoort to Soest with Leo and Rob. We even got a nice temperature and a visit from the sun, allowing us to pause outside a café 'Vanouds 't Hoekje' for a long time. In Soest we had dinner at Eethuys 't Plukje, where I had an adventure of a goat cheese salad, so good! We couldn't find the train station and just missed the bus to Amersfoort, but in the end I did make my way home.

We had been joking on facebook about Rob eating a whole white chocolate cake on his own, so Leo made a small one just for Rob. It doesn't look that big, but trust me, this cake is heavy on the stomach! (but ohh, so good!)

That evening I suddenly got troubles with my troath and spent most of the night coughing in stead of sleeping. The next day I toughed and coughed my way trough a class on making magazines at PGO-support, lead in an enjoyable way by Evert de Vos and Will Tinnemans. Then I spent another five days in bed with yet another cold.
I had wanted to go to the spring meeting of my patient organisation but didn't feel well enough, so I attended via Skype.

Maarten, Wilma and I went to the Elf Fantasy Fair, it was fun as usual! I went as a victorian lady, Wilma had made me a skirt to go with the corset we had bought in december. The weather was coldish but sunny.

I went to a second day of class on making magazines and got some very nice feedback on our magazine.

kitchen counter sillyness. I sometimes leave something weird for Maarten to find when he gets up in the morning. He had asked for a clean pair of socks since his sockbasket was empty, so I found him some and wanted to make sure he would find them ;-)

Roeland and I went to a studium generale lecture on the Utrectse Caravaggisten by Paul Schnabel.

I went to a panel evening revolving about the question whether the Rijksmuseum could function as a national historical museum. Saw a few familiar faces in the public. It was quite interesting. They seemed to have pretty much the same answer to the main question though: no.

It was still long, back then...

Roeland and I spent a long weekend in Brugge and Ghent. Lots of fun, hot chocolate, Jan Van Eyck, historical buildings, noisy neighbours and Hans Memling.

We ended the month with Wilma's birthday dinner. It was the last time her birthday coïncided with queensday.

Luka having fun with our camera's wrist strap.

Stuffed! What is it with 'gourmetten' (having a hot plate on the table with little pans on it in which everyone prepares their own food, which they gather from plates and bowls spread out on the table) that we always overeat?! ;-)

Geplaatst op 17-05-2013.
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Bright and Shiny: Anish Kapoor at De Pont

On December 30, 2012, Maarten and I went to see the exhibition on Anish Kapoor at De Pont, museum for contemporary art, in Tilburg.

Anish Kapoor

I have seen work of him before, maybe only on photo's or tv (like his monumental work Leviathan for Monumenta 2011, this link is worth checking out, trust me!), maybe irl too, but only became conciously aware of Anish Kapoor last summer, watching this documentary. It was late at night, I was cuddling Aafje on the couch and didn't feel like going to bed, so I switched on the tv. And there was this artist with his shiny artwork with both industrial (finish) as well as organic (shape) aspects to it, talking about the relation between art and philosophy. Food for thought! I started taking notes but couldn't keep up. Some of the things I jotted down:

• According to Anish Kapoor, the language of art like his, that doesn't represent something in reality, needs to be philosophical. Scale, space, time are aspects of that. Experiencing art can do something to your experience of time. "To make art you have to make new form, new space, new time".


• There is no innocence in our interaction with the world and each other. Objects are never innocent.


• He speaks of recognizing a third presence, which makes me think about Descartes on seeing clearly.


• Art as a philosophical object or mathematical object.

When I open my eyes

We haven't visited De Pont before and start with looking at another exhibition, When I open my eyes, photo's of the IJsselmeer by Wout Berger. Dreamy photo's of water and sky. The horizon more or less in the middle of each photo. The differences between them depend on the light and the wheater and are quite subtle at times. Berger took the photo's from his bedroom window, it made him look more consiously of his view. A bit like us and the hundreds of photo's we took of the sky seen from our livingroom in the past six years.

Permanent Collection

Next up is the permanent collection, mostly located in small spaces. A varied collection, Maarten remarks. Most of it doesn't appeal to me. Some of the works I do like instantly are those of Jan Andriesse (Regenboog, a large work with pastels, and Veldmaarchalk Erwin Rommel bij de wolhokken) and Angela Bulloch (Night Sky: Saturn North from Earth, I want it to hang on my bedroom ceiling!) I like the idea of Where and when? by Sophie Calle, makes me think of blogposts I write about outings and vacation days.
Trough a pitch-dark corridor, rounding corners, we arrive in a little room with James Turrell's Wedgework III. My eyes have to adjust to the scarce light to be able to see it, even though I'm usually quite good at seeing in the dark. Very subtle. It works estranging, like stepping outside the world, outside time.
I pass by a guided tour for kids. The guide was engaging them in thinking about a definition of art in a playful manner. Large as the building may be, it's pretty crowded. De Pont has had a record amount of visitors that weekend: over a thousand a day. I wonder how much of these works are meant to have a meditative effect on the viewer, which now gets lost in the livelyness all those visitors generate. The visitors are varied but, as can be expected, most of them are white couples in their 50's and 60's, driving expensive cars.

Anish Kapoor - The Exhibition

Every half our a loud BANG sounds trough the building, followed by people laughing off their tension of waiting for it and the shock they had when it came. Minutes beforehand people crowd into a room and stand behind a line. Tension builds. A huge air-pressure cannon starts hissing. More tension, inside the cannon and amongst the crowd. BANG! The cannon shoots a ball of red wax into the corner. It splats apart. Despite knowing what will happen, people gasp or shreek when it happens and then laugh at themselves before the group disperses. It's an attraction. I wonder how much of what the artist means by it gets trough to the people enjoying the show. How many of them give any thought to that? They can read about it, off course, but to what extent does an artwork like this speak for itself?

An untitled work, made in 1994/1995. Rough limestone with a finely polished hole in it. I recognize Kapoors style, even though it is placed away from his other work. It has a primeval feel to it. strong. In my head, I hear a sort of low, deep humming when I look at it.

In the largest part of the hall, works with mirrored surfaces are placed, like S-Curve and Vertigo. People intercact with them, investigate how the shapes of the objects deforms their mirrored image, cameras are clicking. An exhibition like this is almost unthinkable without allowing visitors to take photo's, now that everyone carries around a camera in their phone. In this case, it enhances the experience by adding to the interaction. We join in the fun. Distorted mirrors, not in a carnival or on a fair, but in a museum. What is it that sets them apart as art? Putting them into a museum-context? The materials used? A girl uses them to rearrange her hair, a somewhat intimate scene in the large hall. I think these works are pretty close to getting people to interact innocently with them, no matter what Kapoor says.

Large objects with shiny bright shapes that make me think of ears, like Slug and I Have Places Like These, You Have Places Like These. Their surfaces and colours remind me of cars.

Mounts of cement. These didn't appeal to me.

A white pregnant belly sticking from a white wall (When I am Pregnant). I photograph it from different angles, zoom in, and out again. It makes me think about how a work like this is partly determined by the wall it is placed on and its surroundings. Would this be the same artwork, placed in another museum, on a larger or smaller wall?

A hole in the ground, sans hobbits (Descent into Limbo). It seems endlessly deep, which it isn't.

And several rounded, deeply coloured objects. You can sort-of step inside of them, which makes for an intense experience of colour. The outside is white, therefor the colour on the inside pulls you in. The colours are even, but due to the rounded shapes they seem more intense in some places than in other. Maarten suggest to paint all surfaces of our livingroom blue, ceiling, floor, not just one wall.

I really enjoyed it. Before heading home we scored Magnum hot chocolate at the trainstation.

I have made it a point to only post photo's of this exhibition that focus on visitors experiencing the art, not of the art in itself.

Geplaatst op 20-04-2013.
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Simon's Cat

Been there... Indi used to enjoy keeping me company in my scraproom.

Want to draw him yourself? here's how:

Geplaatst op 19-04-2013.
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Listen and Look

Several years ago Ali Edwards introduced the idea of choosing a word for each year and carrying it with you, making it part of your life, that year and beyond. I have been participating in this for several years now: finish, 2009, simplify, 2010, learn, 2011, listen, 2012
I just realised I hadn't posted about my word for 2013 yet!

I didn't always carry my word for 2012, listen, consiously with me. But once in a while, I reminded myself of it. And I think I did a better job listening this year, although I still have a lot to learn. I found there's a reward in opening your ears and heart to people; people grant you their trust and open up to you. I have had some very special moments with friends this year because I cared enough and shut up long enough to truly listen and let them share what was in their minds and hearts.
I've learned interesting stuff by just listnening in stead of showing off my wits by trowing jokes and remarks into the conversation. Something I still do, mind you, but a little less often ;-) It helps that my world has grown so much bigger now that I'm able to study and do volunteer work and attend many fun and interesting activities. When my world was smaller, I felt a strong need to express myself whenever I did engage in social activities and didn't always leave enough space for others to add to a conversation or paid enough attention to what they were saying. Now that I get to talk to many more people much more often, I get enough chances to express myself and that pressing need has found an outlet, which makes it much easier for me to attend to what others are saying.
Maarten recently told me he had heard or read somewhere that in order to have someone feel like they had a balanced conversation with you, is when you let them do 75% of the talking. Taking enough time for someone also helps, that way you're not in a hurry to catch up but you can truly connect. This can mean meeting up often, or meeting rarely but spending a whole day together when you do.

I have chosen 'Look' as my word for 2013. I'm hoping it will remind me to keep my eyes open to things that might otherwise go unnoticed. To pay more attention to the visual aspects of communicating with people. To look more closely again before taking a photo in stead of just snapping away. To look for opportunities that might appear. And my studies this upcoming year will mostly be about art history, so looking at art will be a huge theme in my life.

Geplaatst op 19-04-2013.
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