The Reward is the Journey

I was thrilled to realise that we were in the right place at the right time.  The World Press Photo competition has been an exhibition I have now appreciated viewing a few years in succession.  'Enjoyed' probably isn't the right verb.  Many of the images hit home hard.  That's the point.  The journalist communicates without words.  The pictures speak for themselves.   And this year was no exception.   I was mystified by 'Signal' the winning entry and stood confronted by it, as though frozen to the spot in De Nieuwe Kerk, the imposing Church situated on Dam Square where the 2014 exhibition has begun its tour which will visit 45 cities around the globe.        Signal is an image of technical ingenuity.  But, beyond this, it really is an image of our time.  It portrays African migrants on the shores of Djibouti City raising their phones in the moonlight...

There is no shortage of things to amuse the discerning visitor to Amsterdam.  Tucked between the less salubrious merchandise and experiences on offer are some truly magnificent pearls of culture which I cannot help but inhale deeply each time I come here.    This trip has been no different in that respect, and high on my list was a return visit to the Stedelijk where we stumbled across an enormous exhibition charting the career of one of the Netherlands' most renown designers, Marcel Wanders.  The basement was the perfect setting in which to show off this design guru's vision-made-real.      If poetry is about love and art is about love and theatre is about love and if opera is about love... why do we think design is about... functionality? Marcus Wanders   Marcel Wanders - Pinned Up, at the Stedelijk Museum (2014)     We are all poets, secretly engineering. Marcel Wanders    ...

Amsterdam has, for a few years now, been a place of retreat for me.  I have frequented the city on vacation more often than any other and have loved spending time exploring the many sites, and discovering those not found in the guidebooks I once purchased and perused as I first got my bearings in Holland.   I was drawn to the nation of tulips and windmills by a very dear friend, herself now an English expat who has, with her husband, (and now 14 month old daughter - but more about this little snowflake later) made Amsterdam very much home.  And now, having enjoyed such wonderful times in this city, coming here has become, for me, something of a homecoming.    We met 6 years ago this month, in the pleasant surroundings of a country house retreat centre where we were both attending/undertaking the Hoffman Process.  Our friendship was one of the several precious gifts I left with at the end of the exhausting...

I breathed it in.  Slowly.  And deeply.   It was wonderfully restorative escaping to the coast.  I felt my shoulders drop, and my mind ease.  It wasn't as though my troubles disappeared but they certainly faded.  As though into the middle distance.  Sinking into the horizon.  The drama of late seemed less oppressive, and thus not nearly so demanding.   In that moment, very little mattered.    I felt re-connected.  To who, or what I know not.  Maybe it doesn't matter.    To myself, and to nature.  To my own true nature, perhaps.