An epiphany of Creativity.

Apr 30

footEpiphanies. On distant shores of countries far far away words floated back and forth yesterday. As the blue water crashed endlessly against the white cliffs .. My vision floated .. Like the seagulls over the pale blue skies. Within and beyond my sight lay only infinity and the thought that all these people walking the grassy lands and enjoying the wonders of nature, would be gone someday. That they are but specs on the windshield of eternity. The cry of a passing gull blown away by the endless wind of eternity. When one looks up and sees the scale of things.. The microscopic event called a human lifetime versus the punctualness of the sea.. One does wonder… I looked up from the keyboard yesterday. Looked away from the puny world that is called humanity and its digital progress and looked around me. Gazed into the start blue eyes of the horizon and listened to philosophical thoughts carried over the wind. Thoughts that seemed to come from far away and yet where very familiar. Thoughts and feelings that had been lost in the maelstrom of my life. And these thoughts lifted a weight that was on my shoulders. Something that has been dragging me down for months.

 

 

Dark days of last. The burden of progress. The weight of technology. The digital doom. Call it what you want .. It has been all around me over the last year. Life on the edge of real and cyberspace has been replaced by a life dominated by cyberspace. Shoulders weighed down by demands of others for support and help. A back burdened with keeping in touch with recent events and staying on top of the ball. Hands grasping the fleeting sand of failing operating systems that needed to be salvaged. Feet stuck in the mud of an overloaded calendar. A cyber citizen.. A digital wizard heaving heavily under the weight of his own potions. Technology was not something that works for “me”. Somewhere along the road of last year I have become enslaved by it. Thoughts crushed out by constant incoming communications. Silence blasted away by incoming phone calls. Concentration obliterated by the myriad of things to be done. Peace of mind burdened by the stress of having to keep up. The thin ice of ones personality cracking under the pressure of it all.

 

shoresOn distant shores….  They say somebody can be crushed under the weight of work. Of things to do, Things to keep up with .. Things to conform with. Where the pressure of being in high demand turns the air we need to breathe into damp oppressive steam that is hard to gulp down. Where we try to grasp too much.. Try to conform and say yes to every demand. Find ourselves dancing to the same corporate beat of having to preform. To sell .. to fix .. to please.. Yesterday I started to see just what I was doing. If conflict is the motor of progress we shall blame it on its bittersweet head. I dragged myself upstairs to our silent attic and started to write. Not to type .. but to write. The light of a single bulb pierced the darkness.. The sound of a pen dancing over a peace of paper floated through the silence. And words came.. No .. words came BACK. Soon the words scattered over once peace of paper after the others. It was like a doorway to the past had been kicked open. Because I remembered the writing style. I recollected the lyrical equations, I looked into the eyes of the writer and it where my own eyes. This is how I used to write.. This is how I used to be. Before I was pushed away from myself by the pressures of modern day life. The next day was the final key to unlock it all. A escape from reality without email, cellphones, or any means of communications. Just my love and I .. and a country where they do not speak our tongue. And slowly the thoughts came back. Watching nature.. Bouncing my thoughts of the wall of knowledge she has of me. Reflecting who I have become versus who I was.. and trying to find out just why things have changed to much..

Creativity in order to state who we are  At the bottom of the ocean lies a drop of truth. The key to this myriad of troubles that has been haunting me these last few months. My very core buckling under the pressure of my own choices to please everybody. Say yes to almost every request. Forgotten who I was in favor of what I do. Drowning out the one thing that makes us who we are. That sets us aside from the beat of the marching drum. That gives us color in the shades of everyday gray. Our own creativity. For setting free the art that lives inside us is just what makes us who we are. What lets us add our own touch of color to the perpetual sunset. The one thing that lets us define ourselves in a world that wants us all to be the same is that creativity. And that is something I found no more in myself. I became conform.. I said yes and thank you.. I forgot that what we do in life is not who we HAVE to be. For in order to be happy .. One needs to vent his creativity.

poles21 days of change. Tribute to the three words.  Veritas Passio et Diversitas. Enscribed not only on the back of my dear Ipod they are words that are the cornerstone of who I am. Veritas : Be true to yourself, be hones in what you say and do. Passio. Do what you do with passion of leave it be. Diversitas. Never be pinned down to one thing. Redefine yourself ever so often and surprise others and yourself with the dynamic nature of who you are. Looking back at the last few months I have seen little of these words in my own lifestyle and I now see the cracks that have been crawling throughout my own happiness. In order for things to thrive they sometimes must adapt to their surroundings and yet, they must also stay true to who they are. A difficult tightrope that must be walked. Yet it must be done. So that why I write these posts. In 21 days one can change they say. Keep something up for 21 days and it becomes a habit. So i'll try .. in 21 creative posts to find back the way that was lost. A little battle against the tides of modern life to make me think about what I want and how I want my creativity to reemerge. And perhaps to inspire you as well.

 

Pictures are from our visit to Wissant and Calais. More can be found in the Flickr section of Knightwise.com 

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Warm Weekend !

Apr 24

Yes I know I've been a bad bad blogger, But I have also been a bad busy blogger too. And shoot me for going outside with lovely weather like this to enjoy some sunshine. Yes : I actually have a tan this year and the summer hasn't even kicked off. But I'll rehash you through the weekend.

 Friday. Got home from a lovely day at work to gingerly pickup the pastels I had received at the post office. Knowing that the Ebay Fairy had come by I was looking forward to yet another book in my Star Trek Paperback collection (Star Trek SCE, Foundations ) that I had bought dirt-cheap of Ebay. The good news is they had the package. The bad news is .. they lost my second package. This being the powersupply of the second-hand Mac-Mini I had purchased the week before …. was not good news.  So my best layed plans of men and mice to set up my Mac Mini as a multimedia server in our living room during the weekend.. Had to be put on hold.  So when I finally got home it was time to rush and get ready for the recording of the Global Geek Podcast (We record on friday these days). A little panic got the best of me when Dave and Tim decided to "hide" from the Skype contact list untill 2 seconds before the recording started. Really .. That Aussie humor ! The actual recording was big fun due to the fact we where "Twitter-casting" As the show progressed we "twittered" what we where talking about and the listeners that where "twittering along" could send in their "twitters". So the whole thing became "semi interactive"

Saturday was one of those days where I thought that I either need a firewall, a bodyguard or a secret Identity. Cause it was support-mayhem as usual. Friend of mine asked me to come over to pick up his Mac I had reinstalled, My sister(s) in law where having a little secret agenda. I had ANOTHER friend with a crashed computer.. And you know how it is : They ALL want to do it on Saturday. So after some extensive schedule-juggling I got most of it out of the way by noon. The afternoon was spent helping Nyana"s sister fiend a smashing outfit ( I tell you : That girl would drive Trinny and Suzanna nuts ) But all in all we had a good time. The sun was out and life was good. ( So was the Vanilla Coffee they have at our favorite coffee bar here in Hasselt)  To be very honest : After watching X-men 3 that night I was to pummeled to do anything else and decided to turn in early (on a Saturday.. I know)

But the day was fresh and feisty on sunday so before the clock had even a chance to strike 10 am it was beaten by the slamming of the front door as we went out for the day. A little trip to the "Knokke of the Ardennes" Durbuy was on the menu and thanks to our great GPS system we where in for an adventurous ride. Somehow the system likes to send us through the vilest and most ghetto-like neighborhoods in order to get somewhere. So instead of circumventing the center of Liege the GPS decided to take us right through the brown-downtown core of the city. Would have been great to shoot some pictures but the chance we would get the camera mugged right out of our hands was not all that remote.

Adolph SaxIn Durbuy the weather was great.. The chinese tourists where plenty and the tourists trying to kanoo where hilarious ! (Not to mention the wonderful Italian food). Afterwards it was time to dive into Dinant which is probably  the most noisiest and smelliest city in the French speaking part of Belgium. The only reason Adolph Sax invented the Saxophone is this place is probably because he was designing some kind of breathing apparatus. Tried to make a nice picture of his statue but again πŸ™‚ More Japanese tourists. But all in all the weather was too great to pass up so we plunked down next to the river "De Maas" and thought back of the first time we came to this place. Coming to think of it .. It was over ten years ago ! The little cable car we took to the top of the Fortress is long gone now. And all in all its amazing to see how fast time goes.  Just to give you guyz some peeks inside I'm plopping in some extra pictures. Enjoy.

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Serenity in the whisps of mocca

Apr 19

 

coffee

 

I slowly wrap my hands around the steaming cup. Almost too hot to touch, yet too tempting to leave be. The sounds of the dawn shout in their absence as I only hear the gentle ticking of the clock. Marching toward a world that just awakens. Some people need their morning cup "to get them started". Others need it because it makes them less moody. Some even need it to just keep moving along. I need my morning cup of cappuccino to stop time. To give me one solemn moment in my day where I focus my entire being on myself and the cup. The taste of the coffee, the smell, the sound of my own breathing and the absence of everything that we call the modern world. In the morning, on my way to work, I rush by a little house, where, behind a window a man sits and reads his newspaper. Beside him .. his own steaming cup of coffee. He too is enjoying that little island of peace. That rests between the nook of sleeping and rushing. That little island of serenety where one is awake enough to enjoy the peace. Savor a world that is not so hectic. Not so rushed. Just a little pause before the melody of  life.

 Picture : April14 on Flickr.

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More than meets the eye.

Apr 18

I think I got my first one when I was about .. 10 .. Back in 1984 they where actually called them Diaclones and they where still these kind of bizarre semi transformable "things" that had a very sketchy Japanese background. But the one I got was a real one. A genuine " Transformer " ( I think it literally fell from the sky on Easter morning, hidden in its box between the bushes in my aunts back yard) And It was no lame car or something. No, the first funky robot I got was a Decepticon : yesirreeee ! Shrapnell was one of the Insecticons who kicked ass from the get-go. The master of electricity and all that stuff.

 insecticonWithin the next years it seemed like the whole "Ark" plowed into our backyard as I got some more great members of my favorite toy-race. I rode the waves of good and bad toy idea's that Hasbro pumped out. From the great Die-cast classics and the fantastic head and power-masters to the disgraceful mini-cons and (god help us) actionmasters. I had a few of all of them but always looked back for the classics or the remakes of those very first Transformers that set foot on the earth. Jazz, Ironhide, Prowl, Bumblebee, Optimus Prime .. Or the fantastic Decepticons : Starscream, Soundwave, Megatron, Octane.  I loved to watch the cartoons that where (at that time) only on a Frenchspeaking channel. Later came my collection of Transformer comics, that I read over and over again.

 

 

bumblebeeBut these days times have changed. I"m supposed to be a grownup now and Transformers have barely survived the last twenty years. With some terrible death-thrashes like the Beastmasters, the Actionmasters and the whole terrible last series with those mini-cons. Needless to say I'm nostalgic to the classic transformer-universe I used to know. Once you grown up and make some money… you stumble onto " The ones that got away " Those Transformers you cried and sulked for for days because you never got them. And of course also the "elusive ones" that you never found in the shops, the stuff of legends so to speak.  These days they are all over Ebay of course and I have refrained myself from buying them cause owning them right now .. is like trying to recapture ones childhood isn't it. Its not realy the same. But with the whole new transformer movie coming in july I'm very curious what is going to be stirred up. With the Robots looking all different then how we used to know them … its going to be quite a surprise. But I'm not gonna talk about the movie. I'm gonna close of by telling you about the real Transformer fans. From the land of the rising weirdo's comes this little movie filmed at the Cosplay conventions. Where the fans keep the transformers alive and …  .. bwa πŸ™‚ I'm not gonna spoil it , just watch πŸ™‚

 

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Medieval Helpdesk.

Apr 12

Absolutely NO comment πŸ™‚ Just watch !

 

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