Mind Cleanup: Aug 2020

AAaaaaaand that was it for August, folks!

My blogging flow was definitely less burdensome than it was in July. And I think that applies to most things in my life. The rhythm of what we used to consider to be normal is slowly returning and I am enjoying getting back into the routine.

Cycling

In some respects my routine has even improved.

For example, when I started to go back to the office, I didn’t feel completely comfortable taking the train, so I started cycling the 19kms to work. And now that I’m back in the office three times a week I have kept up this habit.

We’ll see how long I last when autumn makes an entrance, but for now I feel really good about myself.

Permaculture

I don’t even know what triggered it, but somewhere in the last month I have become very interested in permaculture. I have spoken to several people that have experience with these principles and I will definitely sign up for an extensive course in the future.

Bill Mollison, one of the founders of the concept, says some things in the video above that captivate me. He says:

When you look at a whole system there are two things that are very undesirable: one is work, and the other one is pollution. Pollution is a product of work. Work is a result of not supplying every component of your system with its needs.
(…)
Another thing which is extraordinarily intriguing is that when you design well nature takes hold of what you’ve done and does it better. But what you gotta do is watch the system and guide its life path.
(…)
[Permaculture is] an attempt to build a good place to live.

How to Summer

August was hot. The Netherlands didn’t know how to cope. We were not made for temperatures above 25 degrees celsius, and definitely not for weeks and weeks on end. And where did all the sky-water go?

The pandemic just added that little extra layer of complications.

Beaches were too full, crammed with every Dutch person that would normally travel abroad during their holiday. On top of that, holiday-goers from other countries made their way to our small sliver of coast as well, given that our corona measures have been relatively lenient.

As you can imagine, everybody and their mother had and opinion about this. It was intense.

And for reasons not completely clear to me, quite a lot of people drowned. Did it have to do with the large amount of people in the water and therefore an inherent larger amount of people running the risk of getting in trouble? Or did the abnormally high temperature perhaps do something to the water(currents)? Or are people just not good swimmers (anymore)?

I don’t know what was up, but it was definitely remarkable.

Star Trek

I’ve been watching the Star Trek – Next Generation series the last few months. I am now somewhere halfway season 5. I watched it sporadically as a kid, but never from a-to-z. This means I never got fully acquainted to the different characters, other than their superficial traits.

Also, I never appreciated the deep philosophical questions that many of the episodes touch. Questions such as “what does it mean to be human?”, “what is love?” and “when does help become an imposition of your way of living on another” come by.

Now that I am going further down the Star Trek rabbit hole, I am even thinking of writing a couple of blogposts about the deeper lessons one could learn from it. The stories are not quite ripe yet, but I am enthusiastic about the idea.

Music service switch

I’ve always used free version of music streaming apps. This means I have to deal with commercials in between music these days. And that’s OK. I get it.

It did start to bug me that Spotify made their commercials extra annoying, probably to coax me towards buying their premium version. I don’t like being manipulated that way. So once I got over my attachment to my Spotify playlists, I made the switch to Deezer.

It’s been an easy process and there is nothing about Spotify that I miss. I highly recommend Deezer. The fact that their commercials are friendly and subtle (and not 50% louder than the music I was listening too either) I am actually considering trying the premium version!

Confusing quote

My interest for permaculture has also caused my filterbubble to start including information from more alternative sources. And that is how this little gem came upon my path:

I was actually quite confused by it.

The premise that plants grow better if you speak kindly to them is already a bit wobbly, if you ask me. I think I am not integrated enough in the treehuggers-community to be able to accept the parallel between plants and people in the way it is presented here. My imagination is clearly lacking…

On to September we go!

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Mind Cleanup: April 2018

April has been a good month.

Sunny weather

We had a some real, genuine sunshine that lasted for almost a week, including a weekend. It’s amazing what sunshine does for one’s spirits. Or at least for mine.

It was also during this beautiful sunny weekend that I sat in my garden for the first time. I mean, I’ve been living in my “new home” for over a year now, so I’ve definitely sat in my garden before, but that was different. Last weekend I just sat there, not to eat, or light a barbecue or whatever. I just closed my eyes and sat in the sun, with my sleeves rolled up and with my blindingly white legs exposed, like fresh solar panels, to charge my batteries. Such bliss!

In our first year, we just let the garden “be” as it felt kind of impolite to just barge in and start pulling out plants, root and all, without getting to know them first… I know, I’m silly that way. But this year, when the sun came out and plantlife started to explode, I decided to be a bit more assertive. So, I’m growing some stuff inside now that will be move to the garden soon.

Also, a nationwide initiative called “mission Stone Break” is encouraging people to take out a row of bricks / tiles in front of their houses and grow something there. It’s a really fun idea, so that is also something I’ve been doing that has been making me quite happy, as well!

In the Lyme Light

Another sunny day earlier this month (the 14th of April), which luckily wasn’t quite as hot as the lovely garden-sit-Saturday a week later, had me tying up my sunning shoes for “Lopen for Lyme”, a walkathon to raise both money and awareness for Lyme’s disease.

I have half a blogpost sitting in my drafts file, where I explain more about how the day went, which I will try to publish soon. But the short version of the story is: our team raised over €5.000,- and had a wonderful day in a beautiful area. I ran 14 km and felt it in my thighs for three days, but it was totally worth it!

Chance encounters

Another cool thing that happened this past month was an encounter I had on a Saturday at work. Contrary to my usual office duties, I had been assigned a shift in “the store”, which was kind of nice but also something you have to do regularly in order to be able to bring your A game.

So, as I had let my colleague do most of the harder stuff that day, when a guy walked in asking for advice on what to buy for his son, I volunteered. We walked around the store and I did the best I could to help him out and we ended up having a fun chat.

When he had collected all the stuff he needed, I walked him to the cash register and asked if he was a member so that I could give him a discount. He wasn’t completely sure, but he thought he might be, so I offered to look him up in the system. I asked him his last name, and to my complete surprise he said MY NAME!

And to people called Jansen or de Jong (two very common names in the Netherlands) that may not come as a surprise but my name is really uncommon. I have never met another person with my last name that wasn’t a family member, so you can imagine I was dumbfounded, when I heard my last name come from the mouth of this comeplete stranger (and pronounced “the right way”, and everything).

And when I looked at him again, suddenly he reminded me of my uncle. So yes, this guy was a distant relative, who just happened to walk into the store on that one day that I was assigned that shift and that one minute that I decided I would step in to play “personal shopper” for a random customer to alleviate the weight on my colleague’s shoulders.

Luckily it was a really nice guy and when he left the store we agreed we should meet again for a cup of coffee.

Cosmos, you be funny!

Music

I’ve been enjoying new music a lot as well, but there is really only one artist that I want to talk about: Janelle Monae.

She is such a force. I can’t even….

I mean, I already loved her “old stuff”, like Tightrope (see below), but the stuff she’s doing now has really carved her name deep into the history books.

Make me Feel, Django Jane, Pynk and I like that are all really different songs but they’re all revolutionary in some way. She reaches back to styles we know well but mixes them up and melts them down to something uniquely hers.

And don’t get me started about her looks. She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?

Yupp, I’m a fan.

Mind Cleanup – RF16 edition

A year and a half ago, while traveling, I met the most wonderful couple from Denmark. I only spoke to them briefly but you know how it goes, sometimes you just need 5 seconds with someone to know you have a click.

Our friendship was sealed after their visit to my hometown some months later, and now it was our turn to visit them. And besides just being great friends, they also gave our trip a major upgrade by giving my boyfriend and me super-special wristbands, granting us access to some behind-the-scenes action (and above average toilets).

It was an amazing week. Let me talk you through some of it!

Music

First of all, there was the music. It’s worth mentioning that the festival gates may have opened on Saturday, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that the music terrain opened (for the masses) and the big names starred. The first part of the week was primarily camping ground partying (not to be underestimated). There were also some smaller stages and performances in the so called “warm up”-days. The bands named below are some I feel are worth mentioning as most other reviews don’t seem to take them into account.

Warm-up

One of the bands I saw during the warm up days was M.I.L.K. Kind of an akward looking dude with a bit of a seventies look and a chilled out vibe.

Wednesday

• And then, when the gates to the musical grounds opened (and the camping grounds were starting to look and smell increasingly troubling), the first performance to kick the whole spectacle off hit me like a bucket of ice cold water on a hot summer day. It was refreshing and energetic, as well as confronting and slightly uncomfortable. It was filled with love, hope and forgiveness. In all honesty at some point I had to sit down because I was too emotional to stand on my feet any longer.It was the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians, with Damon Albarn.

  It wasn’t so much the songs themselves, but what they stood for that brought me to my knees. Just imagine dedicating your life to music and finally being able to play in a major orchestra in Damascus and then seeing everything around you being destroyed. Many of the musicians fled the country, some stayed. In short, the orchestra fell apart. And even at Roskilde festival, some members could not be present because of visa problems or other complications due to their status as refugees.

  These incredibly strong people, with their very Arabic rhythms and melodies, did not sing of their suffering (as far as I could understand from their comments in between songs). They played and sang with joy and gratitude for being alive and well, inviting the (incredibly white) audience to join in. THEY were welcoming US… It was as much beautiful as it was painful…

 

• My personal highlight of the week was a performance we hadn’t even really planned to go to. It was Pat Thomas and the Kwashibu area band, that lured us in when we walked past their stage (after watching Slayer).

Their connection with the audience was so energetic that the whole tent was pretty much bouncing up and down. They themselves seemed to be surprised by the love they were getting from the crowd, as some of the musicians took out their phones at some point to film what was going on in front of the stage. Pretty bloody awesome.

• Another unexpected surprise was Odesza. All though the duo had already made their appearance in my playlists before the festival, I had absolutely not expected their performance to be as vibrant as it was. It wasn’t just the fact that they were switching back and forth from drum kit to mixing board that made it entertaining, both to the eye as to the ear. It was also the colors and lighting they were using on the very cool cube shaped Apollo stage. It was truly mesmerizing.

Thursday

All though we had had quite wonderful weather during the warm up days (which turned out to be a truly appropriate name) by Thursday, everyone was wearing their rubber boots and fashionable ponchos. Luckily we had managed to find a dry spot when the heavens truly started to pour down on us.

• As it turned out, our place of dry refuge gave us an audio image (we couldn’ t see her, only hear her) of a very entertaining performance by Elle King. She switched effortlessly between country, blues, reggae and pop. And she turns out to be very funny as well!

If you only know her song Ex’s and Oh’s, as I did before hearing her at Roskilde, do check out her other stuff. She rocks.

• Our next show of the day made us feel like uninvited guests at a Norwegian private party at first, but the atmosphere was pretty contagious and the songs turned out to be pretty easy to sing a long to; it was (pardon my French) Kakkmaddafakka. These extremely Northern-European looking guys really made me smile, as they sang “I wanna be a gangsta. An original G. So come on, please give me your money”. I loved how they were being so polite about it, hahaha!

 

• All though I did not stay to watch the whole performance, I was dealt a small slice of “what the fuck”-ness as I walked past Grimes‘ performance. Besides not being particularly good, imho, it had the same weird alien vibe that K-Pop artists have going on these days, only… weirder? Thanks Grimes, you really made me feel old…

Friday

• Luckily Calypso Rose showed up on Friday to save me from that Grimesy feeling. It was the performance we had been looking forward to all week and boy did she deliver! The 76 year old bootyshakin’ queen of calypso knocked my hat off as she sang: I am the daughter of a warrior. No time to rest or retire. Others have come and gone but Calypso Rose is still singing on.

Even after she had left the stage and the lights were switched back on, the audience was still chanting her name. I swear, she must have put a spell on us! Hail Calypso Rose!

Saturday

On the final day of Roskilde Festival 2016 the camping grounds started to empty out pretty quickly. One of the final big performances on the iconic big orange stage was primarily a big feast of recognition for all the Danish visitors, as Dizzy Mizz Lizzy rocked the podium. All though I had never heard of them before, I think they would do very well in the Dutch charts as well. In the video below they play a medley of three of their most popular songs (I think). If you’re into drums and raging guitars, give ’em a go!

Food

Roskilde Festival prides itself in being a non-profit event, providing really cool projects in Denmark and abroad with funds to make the world a better place. Also, their is a strong focus on sustainability and social awareness during the festival itself (all though the enormous amounts of beer and liquor do make it challenging to stay focused on these topics at times). When it comes to the restaurants and food stalls at Roskilde Festival, only proprietors were invited that could demonstrate that at least 80% of their ingredients were of eco-friendly origin. Pretty cool!

My culinary highlights were:

• The most commonly served lemonade :  hyldeblomst, aka elderflower!
• Polish sausages, that didn’t turn out to be Polish
  (the Danish word for sausage is actually pølse, so I have learned)
• Best falafel I’ve ever had
• ginger shots
• Danish pastry

People

I am not quite sure how to sum up all the lovely encounters I had during my week at Roskilde Festival, but it was truly heart warming. I don’t know how the rest of Denmark really is (or how many of the great talks I had with Scandinavian looking peeps may actually have been with Norwegians or Swedes) but from the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for making me feel so welcome. Or as one of the Kakkmaddafakkas said:

Thank you for reminding me what normal is

As my blog only covers a tiny slice of what the festival had to offer, I added some other reviews of the festival below:

• Mutkus.com – From Russia with Love: Snowden addresses Roskilde | 28-06-216
• Huffington Post – Culture Of Kindness | 07/07/2016
• Consequence of Sound – Roskilde 2016 Festival Review | 05/07/2016
• Photographic impression by Mariana Gil | 06/07/2016
• Tuk20s review of RF 16 | 07/07/2016

A for August

Exactly one week from now it will be the first day of August and instead of starting with good intentions, fresh new promises and strict commitments in January, I decided to just start completely randomly in the eighth month.

Contrary to new year’s resolutions they will not be plans for the following 12 months but just for the month of August itself and we’ll just decide how to proceed when September comes peaking.

So what are my goals for the month of August?

• Post one blog a day all month
• Eat at least one piece of fruit every day of the month
• Go jogging at least once a week
• Add one new item to my bucketlist

And that’s it for now! So to sum it up: 31 blogs, >31 pieces of fruit, >5 jogs, 1 bucketlist item in 31 days.

See you on the other side!