Hi everyone, wherever you may be,
I hope that everyone is doing well in the midst of all the uncertainty that swirls around us on planet earth these days.
At the end of the day, we all have so much to be grateful for. Here is my list of 10 for today:
*whatever created me and gave me life
* my beautiful daughter
* being alive
* being healthy
* having a home
* my fiends
* my brain
* my well functioning faculty
* coffee
* art being art and existing in this world
What are you grateful for today?
Hi again,
Today I decided to create a small animation from a favourite photograph of mine simply to wish you a bright weekend, a better tomorrow, an a healthy year.
This is especially dedicated to my beautiful daughter Lea, who sits in quarantine upstairs, and I miss her so much. The hand in the image is hers and the starfish was put back in to the sand safely.
Good Morning,
Every year since my daughter was a small child, we visited this forest near the town of Xanten in Germany. This year was no exception. I always walked with her there and upon arrival we stopped and took a moment to greet the forest. One hand on a tree and she still recognises her tree till now, we announced our presence and pledge to do no harm to the forest. She always loved this little ceremony and so did I .
If you have chance to read the book, ‘secret life of plants’, you will see the overwhelming evidence that our planet and its fauna are so alive and so communicative in ways we hardly can comprehend. I do completely believe that our presence in the forest is felt and communicated from tree to tree and that intentions can also be felt.
It has been proven that the life of the tree retreats in the face of harmful intent and hides in its roots and that it can actually feel distress. There is so much to research about this subject and to experiment with as we reconnect to this marvellous garden of plenty that the planet offers to us so generously.
This morning I was driving my daughter to her weekend Chinese class and we had a very interesting conversation. She was complaining about her inability to always find interest in continuing to learn Chinese whilst living in Germany and this took us to musings about the human brain and how we, humans have so much unused potential. It has been said that humans only use 10% of the brain capacity and once we push and struggle to learn new things, we are perhaps activating otherwise dormant wirings in our brain and faculties. She became very interested in the process and walked to the class with a spring in her step.
Day 68 of 365~
image is a composite of a wall in Hong Kong and a closeup portrait of my daughter.
Possessions: What do we really, truly possess? We think of possessions as things we plan and hope on keeping permanently, and the more we have the more we want to collect. But in the end, does it really matter? Maybe we can call them temporary belongings, because that is all they are. When we leave this place, the only possessions we are allowed to cary are the immaterial ones. How much love did we invest, how much care did we give and get, and how much goodness lived in us? Maybe these are the fuels that will be needed in our onwards journey into the next destination if there is one.
Day 65 of 365~
image is a composite of a bird I watched this week and an old portrait of my daughter.
If we were asked to recall the events of the last 5 minutes, we can play them back in our minds where they are recorded almost perfectly. Then if we were asked that same question a year later, all details become blurry and most of the story is lost. Why is that? Why do memories fade? Is it by design? Or did something go wrong along our line of evolution?
Day 63 of 365~
Image taken back in 2012, in Shanghai, China
The more we learn, the less we know. As we open doors to unknown territory with our questions, (as we quest more ions), we realize how much more there is to know. A beautiful day on the beach is a starry night at a different time of the day and what seems to be truth is just another facet of the great unknown.
The magic lies in the journey and not the destination, as we, in our impatience and need for instant gratification seem to forget.
Day 60 of 365~
Image taken in magical New Zealand with my daughter
When you have your first child you become privy to the most well guarded secret: you have just signed on for the most important and permanent job of your life. It looks so easy. Everyone does it. Our parents did it. Our friends and neighbors seem to do it. And then your child arrives! I used to hold important job after job before having my child, each with a heavy series of responsibilities, but I dove into them armed with the knowing in the back of my mind that I can just quit when I choose to. Then came the parenting job, and I realized that this is one job I can never quit!
I would not exchange this job for any other in the world because it is the gift that keeps on giving.
Day 58 of 365~
Image taken of my 8 year old daughter overlooking the valley of the saints in Lebanon, 2012
I was going through my archives of hundreds of thousands of photographs as one often does, when I came across this image of my daughter when she was 4 years old running through the cedars of Lebanon and it made me catch my breath. She is now 13, and time has tricked us all again. How relentless it is, never pausing, never letting us catch our breath. It is always later than we think, isn’t it? So many unrealized intentions, how does one keep up with life, or should we at all?
Pausing and dreaming today in the moment of what was, what is and what will be…
Day 57 of 365~
Image taken in the cedars of God forest in Lebanon in 2008
The best part of every adventure is , for me, the coming back home moment. I always long to go but I long ever more to come back. Home is such a place of safety, recharge and warmth. When you are lucky enough to have someone there that you can’t wait to hug, then it’s only the icing on the cake.
Day 29 of 365
Images of my daughter as we played around with some lighting.