The Unheeded

Made a biketrip to Pispala today. One remarkable piece of built environment. With no straight edges, with no overtly easy accesses, ever shifting, unsteady, untouched by our present fervour to flatten things. Once again, I felt out of place, in a place that impresses you, makes an impression on you - of you. Yesterday, perhaps a bit ill, I wandered nearby there, seeking a way through hardly accessible raspberry bushes. Had to turn back, not to rip myself with prickles and stings. Someone had bit me - I studied the numbness spreading to my shins, the soft throbs in my body. I felt lost, the world caring little of where and how this being was going. On my own. Much in the same way as years ago when I first came to Belgium. The nature unpredictable, unreliable, vast and consuming.

Now, the wind of motion. A luminous aura of warm air in the sky, much the same hue as still waters; golden gray, varnished blue or misty white, I couldn't tell. The warm air told me once again, that somehow I had stepped out of my realm. The water, it felt cold to my skin, but not like a while ago; in the past few days, gray clouds had stormed across the sky, deepened the waters and the waves. Now, the fluid mirror let me slip through easily as a dream. Hot-air balloons drifting in the haze, sedate like dreams.

The nature, the uttermost otherness of nature.

Read some environmental philosophy today. Waking up, my throat a bit sore. Bought a Karelian pastry from a reserved fellow, ate it while walking. Had eaten in a different way, lately. Paying much attention. It's a considerable price to pay. Had slept wearily, drowsily drifted into sleep in the afternoon, in silence. Talked little with people. Sur la rue, les gens parlaient français.

Yesterday I had seen some photos of a beloved one... marveled how she wears many shapes and colours, an atmosphere of a bygone time. Yet she just gives it as it comes, rien est recherché. The easiness of presence unaffected, and yet those who her rationality, her casualness, know only slight of her, only a slight of her. I pondered on a human being. We are creatures of dreams and reflections as well as productive, pathological, preordained.

I saw admirable people today, people feeling weak, people singing in the street, sad, burdened people, people feeling separated. You could see that they were feeling. Can you see it if you deny it?

Not long ago, when someone asked my mission in life, I heard myself saying: "To preserve, to create and to destroy."

The otherness of nature. It all felt dear to me.