Settling Down Under

The Newtown Flat

            I have spent these past couple days since arrival sharing time and wandering with my cousin Alice.  Alice and I had not met prior to 1995.  She arrived that winter at my parent’ home to share the holidays with us in the wake of her brother Charlie’s death.  He died from a brain tumor at the age of 19.  I never met Charlie, although many stories over these dozen years have provided a quality of animation to the photographic images I have seen and carry in my mind.   

            Alice’s and my friendship has emerged slowly during visits in both hemispheres.  A screenwriter, she has become progressively less self deprecating regarding her craft and gift over these recent years.  I believe her talent is revealed by the fact that now, only in her early 30s, she is able to support herself entirely through her writing, albeit quite leanly this year.  She has written a number of short series for public television, including a piece called the Silence.  The Silence was first picked up by the Toronto and later the Seattle Film festival.  While filmed as two discrete episodes, it was also released in a manner to be presented as a feature length film, as it was shown in these two festivals.  At present, she has three primary projects, two feature length films, and one short television series, in various stages of development. 

            Her days are spent writing in her funky one bedroom apartment in Newtown, a working-class, studenty neighborhood in Sydney’s Inner West. Despite her humble income, she has managed regular overseas visits, most recently passing through Washington last winter en route to a writers’ residency in Sitka Alaska.  Sitka’s location was supportive in development of a script she is working on regarding Alaskan artist Rockwell Kent.  

            As I mentioned in my last post from Europe, Alice and I have shared a number of fantastic road trips in western Washington.  Just yesterday, she recalled with enthusiasm our walk, in the pouring rain, out to the very tip of Neah Bay where we traveled as a part of a 3 day loop of the peninsula in December ’06.  

            Since my arrival in Sydney, we have spent leisurely days with lots of walking which has felt like a liberating gift to the body after my final cold, shuttered weeks in northern Europe.  My first morning we wandered through local Newtown and Erskineville neighborhoods where I had the best coffee I’ve had in 2 months and 3 countries.  I have arrived in yet another distinct and unique urban corner of the world.  Here, of the architectural landscape, I am most struck by the tightly packed one and two story terrace houses.  These small flank sharing homes are commonly painted in a vibrant array of colors, a complimentary and different tone covering the distinct wrought iron grills, gates, and railings.  

            Another day we took a lengthy walk through the Sydney Botanic Gardens which is situated along the harbour, just east of Circular Quay, the tourist swamped area around the Opera House.   Both in the Gardens and in our neighborhood walks, I have been delighted to again see the Australian flora and the avian world which reside therein; ibis, minah birds and there suspended in the trees in broad daylight thousands of fruit bats.  This is indeed a strange land of many shadeless trees, spectacular insects and reptiles, pouched and webbed feet mammals.  My journey in Australia this time will not have me communing quite as intimately with the more peculiar flora and fauna of the continent as I did during my five month stay in 98/99.  Although who knows what we’ll run into when we’re up visiting Alice’s parents in the tropical bush suburbs of Brisbane.  

            Yesterday, our late morning included an exquisite swim at the Redleaf harbour pool.  Tucked into a cove of an affluent eastern suburb, a large swimming area is separated from the mooring boats by a metal arc, a fence of sorts extending down to the harbor floor and above the water line perhaps 15 feet.   Although it initially feels cold to the toes, once in the water is a beautiful temperature.  Later in the day I ventured from Newtown back up into the city center to meet with my 17 year old cousin Hannah.  Hannah having just finished high school is awaiting scores from her big placement exams and deliberating about continuing straight on to university or deferring a year to work and travel.  The nature of my encouragement in that deliberation is probably rather self evident.  Later in the week, we’re having a small family/friend gathering at which I’ll have the occasion to see her mum, my first cousin Chrissie, and Hannah’s two younger siblings.  

 

            In a matter of hours, I will be meeting Ewan at the airport, our second international rendez vous.  For Christmas, my folks gifted us a few days in a holiday apartment tucked just beneath the Sydney Harbour bridge.  We will stay there until our departure with Alice on the 20^th, the beginning of a road trip adventure north to Brisbane for a sultry, languid Christmas.     

Tips in Transit

Having passed fleetingly, via airports, through the Arab and Asian worlds, I arrived in Australia mid-afternoon on December 13^th.   To some extent, due to the arrangement of my flights, I was able to mimic the Australia time zone during the course of my 2 days of travel.  Although the periods of sleep were rather abbreviated, they did accord with eastern coast Australia night    and as a consequence I was not entirely lopsided upon arrival.

            Few points of note for those who might encounter similar layovers in the new Bangkok Suvarnabh airport.

·         ‘Day rooms’ exist at the airport providing a place to sleep for travelers who have such extended layovers.  This is quite common as Bangkok is a central hub for intra-Asian flights.  I believe the rooms cost $50-60.  I never in fact saw the rooms, although I later saw the signage, as upon deplaning in Bangkok with 13 hours ahead of me before my next flight, I moved through immigration rather than remaining in the terminal.   Once out the other side, as my Bangkok > Sydney flight was on a separate carrier and I did not yet having a boarding pass, I couldn’t get back in to access the day rooms.  Honestly, I think this was a blessing as having arrived late morning in Bangkok, if I had slept all day my internal clock would have been precisely opposite the direction in which it needed to move.    

·         Having, by my arrival in Bangkok, been inside airport/plane temperature controlled environments for more than 20 hours, I did not, as some might have, take a cab in for a fleeting tour of the city.  However, with ample time for wandering I spied a sweet little park out the windows and bee lined for it.  If one exits the airport on the bottom most level with the buses and turns right, follows along to the end of the terminal building a well cared for bit of green space surrounds a small Buddhist shrine.  There I was able to sit for some time breathing in natural air (at some distance from the roads and buses) and taking in a bit of sun, both infinitely restorative.   

·         There on the corner of the terminal just opposite the park is a good Thai restaurant which is filled with flight attendants and airport staff, no foreigners.  It was ¼ or less the price of food inside the airport.

·         I spent the day wandering, writing, sitting in the little park, one brief nap stretched out on a row of molded metal chairs.  With about 2 ½ hours before my flight I finally procured my boarding pass and entered back into the inner terminal and veritable duty free mall of Bangkok Suvarnabh.  I stumbled across a Day Spa close to the E gates (there may well be others strewn throughout, but this was the only I noted).  Most of my life I would have passed by such things assuming prohibitive cost.  However, Rain, one of my SIOM classmates lived in Thailand for several years, studied Thai massage, and in our school trip to China in 2006 was ever in search of the cheap foot massage.  Upon closer inspection, the airport day spa was advertising hour massages, feet and shoulders, for 600bhat, about $18.  In I went.  I am certain that this bit of TLC combined with the lubrication of two glasses of airplane red afforded me a sound and uninterrupted 5 hours of sleep on that final leg of my journey on to Sydney.

 

            My cousin Alice was there waiting at the airport in Sydney and swooped me off immediately to the Coogee women’s baths, a find she has spoken of for years.  After a brief drive, we arrived before an eastern horizon all water.  She told me with a smile that she would ‘shout this one for me,’ (ie pay for the both of us), entry fee all of .20 cents.  I’m not sure when the last time in my life was I entered anywhere or anything for .20 cents.  Only a moderate rock wall separates the simple salt water pool from the Pacific Ocean.  We went for a relatively short swim as the temperatures were only in the mid 60s and the water rather brisk.  There was a quality of the air and water on my skin that were purely surreal.  What liberation, to be freed after 44 hours of transit into this warm, vital world of the southern hemisphere. 

           

Final Vignettes from Tournai

Heading Definitively South

 

Dawn crept slowly into the gray skies over northern France as I made my way south by train. This was the beginning of some 40+ hours of travel, including a 4 hour layover in Bahrain, 13 in Bangkok, which would transport me the other side of the world to arrive in Sydney, Australia on December 13^th. Behind me I have left cold, tempestuous rains, squalling winds, homes which are shuttered tight each night, insulating them from the outside world in ways which I found increasingly oppressive toward the end of my stay. I also left a world luminously decorated for Christmas; white and colored lights adorning La Grande Place, the Belfry and streets throughout Tournai. Special breads for the celebration of St Nicholas have been sold at discounted prices clearing the way for bûche de Noëls. It feels a distinctly more organic marriage than that I have witnessed between Christmas and the land down under; adorned with festive garlands and plastic conifers, the 25^th of December often spent languishing in the heat. It was 104 degrees the last time I spent Christmas there in Brisbane in 1998.

Again this year I will return to the home of my cousins Susan & Rex Addison, who now live in a new home designed by Rex situated on Mt Crosby, 45 minutes outside of Brisbane. Their home was my first port of call after a year and half in Nepal. Their daughter Alice has become a very dear friend over the past many years. We have shared multiple road trip adventures out the Olympic Peninsula in order to appease her predilection for the quintessential American diner and requisite pie. But all that is another story and continent, and now I mean to write of my final days in Europe.

European Christmas Market

Of my last week in Tournai much time was spent helping Caddy prepare goods for the Scleroderma Association stall at the annual Christmas market. A small number of devoted people pour weeks, months into preparation of hand made jams, syrups, cookies, cakes, marzipan sweets, hand sewn bags, scarves, pillow cases, and collection of donated items from friends; from earrings to flower arrangements, shawls brought back from someone who holidayed in Turkey, hand crafted Brazilian games of chess, lace napkins someone found on sale in Brugge. Last year they made about 2000 euros, approx $3500.

I was struck by a number of elements in the process of preparation. Having worked, both as a volunteer and an employee, for a variety of non-profits over my life, I have witnessed so much effort and energy poured into such organizations. Perhaps just as universally, regardless of the cause, there seems to be an intrinsic and continuous struggle to acquire what is needed, the desired resources to create infrastructure, for direct services, to fund research, to continue fundraising. This is certainly the case for the Belgian Association of Scleroderma patients. http://www.sclerodermie.be/ (note this site is in French). While noting the struggle, I simultaneously found my heart warmed to see so much help and participation from the community which support Caddy in her work; some dear old friends, others who have had someone important in their own lives diagnosed and often severely incapacitated.

Caddy articulated her concurrent frustration with the lack of patient participation, the absence of patients actively investing of themselves in the effort, however they are able. She devotes an enormous amount of her life energy, at times I’m sure at the cost to her own health, to supporting & maintaining the work of this organization; providing resources and support for patients with Scleroderma, communicating with physicians conducting clinical research, and involvement in other organizations within Belgium and the larger European community devoted to other connective tissue and auto-immune disorders.

Preparation and unloading for the market was done in good spirits despite very soggy weather. Being the youngest of the set up crew by several decades, I totted the lion’s share of the items up the polished stone steps of the Hotel De Ville, one of many buildings assumedly rebuilt after La Grande Place was demolished during WWII. Over the course of a weekend, the hall is filled with several dozen vendors who sell their wares for the holidays; handmade puzzles and toys, candy, jewelry, hats, baskets of prepared meats, olives, alcohol etc.

During our set up, a gentleman with a rather shiny bald head and an aspiring to be handlebar moustache arrived with an additional folding table, the legs of which I promptly unfolded and made ready to turn upright. “Ey, bien alors!” he responded a bit taken a back (hmmm…how to translate…let’s just say an exclamation) to which Caddy responded, “She’s an American,” as if that should explain everything. We are well reputed in this world, for our ‘volonte’, that rather distinct American verve which wins us both praise for its dynamic initiative and disdain for its arrogance, its potential for recklessness. The market weekend was marked by stormy skies, heavy winds, and torrential rains. Many people in Beglium are struggling with recently increased heating prices and are prioritizing necessary utilities and food to the understandable detriment of holiday purchases. Still, Caddy and their booth did well, netting the same amount of money they did last year despite the sluggish economy which has been the subject of much conversation with the arrival of winter weather in recent weeks.

Gaspard, my now 5 month old host nephew, was with us during the work day both Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Much to the amusement of Caddy and Jean, I engineered a two scarf sling arrangement à la Nepal or Asia or Africa, or the majority of the world where infants are kept close to the human body. For stretches of time when he was fussier I continued with Christmas market preparations or time at this keyboard with Gaspard soothed by the presence of a warm body close by. And I was in turn soothed by his tender presence. Portions of this past week were fraught with the challenges of long distance communication in relationships with some of those most intimate in my life. Palpable in these interchanges were the limitations of the telephone as a vehicle for dialogue as well as the acrid taste of poorly communicated words and concurrent misunderstanding which must then await requisite time zone delay. In the midst of this relatively brief tumult, the immediacy and simplicity of Gaspard’s presence, his gaze, tiny fingers, and soft head felt distinctly precious.

Approaching the Health of the Body

Daily at the breakfast table, I have observed Caddy and Jean each take half dozen or more different pharmaceutical medications. Originally I inquired about the action of each. We discussed them, some of the specific details I’ve forgotten, there were also a lot of not very specific details. While I’m not sure they would use these words, it’s my impression they have both surrendered their bodies to the care of western medicine.

Caddy has felt relief from a variety of symptoms as well as a dramatic slowing of the progression of her Scleroderma with medical treatment. Having retired early with severe hypertension, has a susceptibility to stress induced arrhythmia, and a heart murmur, Jean has struggled more with the efficacy and side effects of medications. He has found a fine line exists between guarding the hyperactivity of his heart without completing robbing him of vital energy to live his life. The day after I returned home from the Hague, he explained he had been experiencing severe pain radiating down his left arm, but repeatedly refused to consult his cardiologist or go to the doctor. He rested much of the week, depleted of his normal vim & vigor. Decades of poor choices regarding nutrition, alcohol, stress, and activity level were certainly not going to be influenced by a few needles, which I offered anyway to little affect. I attentively observed my dear friend and father all week, inquired about the presence or absence of sublingual nitroglycerin or an appropriate equivalent in the home, and reviewed CPR protocol in my head.

I sensed the strong emotional impact of his diminished energy and capabilities. He is accustomed to helping whoever, whenever, with whatever needs to be done, evidently his nature is a contributing factor in the equation. Finally the day before my departure he went in to see his doc and learned that although his hypertension was still reasonably controlled, the peripheral edema in his left leg, which he didn’t mention, was severe and his murmur is much more pronounced indicating significant cardiac fatigue. Translating these recent encounters, I recognize the need to work on my French medical vocabulary. It was a delicate dance to articulate what felt like an appropriate level of concern recognizing all the while that, at the age of 60, Jean seems unlikely to make significant life style changes. He is now being more attentively followed by those into whose hands he has trusted his care.

Threads of Intimacy

Intimacy, while often hijacked to more poetically imply the sexual in our culture, is a phenomenon which I both revere and actively seek out in life. One can intimately experience a gleaming planet in the dawning eastern sky, the late afternoon light in the dangling tendrils of a weeping birch, the feel and texture of hair atop an infant’s head. I also discoverer intimacy in a variety of more formal human interchanges; market interactions such as the care observed by a vendor in selecting and packaging vegetables or fruit, the standard kiss on the cheek greeting in Belgium once, in France two, and in Holland I don’t remember how many. And further in friendship, there are so many levels on which intimacy is shared.

This autumn I have shared a longer period of time with Caddy & Jean than since I first lived in their home 16 years ago, and intimacy has been a very precious part of this chapter. This has manifested in many shared meals after which we have lingered a long while at the kitchen table. Many of our discussions have involved deep matters of the heart, how we live and learn in companionship, how we learn to open our hearts and share our lives with another human being. We have also spoken at length of family, learning, health, spirituality, cultural differences, languages & communication, differences between men and women, suffering present in the world and how we hold it. These leisurely conversations have unfolded in an unhurried manner, and we have returned to many of them over our shared time, peeling away layers of the onion to share more and more deeply.

On a regular, almost daily basis I have massaged Caddy’s legs and feet. This ritual began during one of my visits neither of us remember how many years ago, long before I ever considered entering into a healing profession. Sitting and taking into my hands the feet of another human being is something I have found opens the most intimate of doorways to dialogue, to sharing and it always feels to me like a truly sacred exchange.

These two people are deeply important in my life. While parents in a sense, ours is a friendship not perhaps as encumbered by some of the dynamics present in normal parent-child relations. This is the case not just for me, but for them as well as relates to their own children. Not being blood family, our relationships are less fraught with the deeply engrained and not always so deeply beneficial patterns that evolve, almost inevitably, within families. We can meet and engage as adults. They offer their thoughts and even counsel about my life choices quite honestly while honoring that I’ve managed to make it around the earth a couple times, in a broad proverbial as well as literal sense. At times, we candidly disagree. At other times, I am more easily able to receive insight and thoughts from them than I might from my own parents, who it feels important to note have supported me to soar with fierce independence throughout my life and with whom I also have a very intimate and loving relationship.

***

Shifting of the Winds

When I chose Tournai as my first port of call on this journey, I believe I was directed by a rather intuitive wisdom. There I knew I might rest more deeply than I could ever grant myself permission to do had I remained in Seattle or even elsewhere in the US. The heavy, dark circles that I’ve been carrying beneath my eyes intermittently through grad school have disappeared. This initial chapter of my journey has been a beautiful balance of rest and nourishment along with fresh adventures, particularly during my time in Israel.

My experiences these past two months have also influenced the horizon I see ahead, and one likely alteration of my itinerary. Before leaving the US, I only purchased my tickets as far as India, assured that inter-Asian travel costs remain relatively static within reason. From the beginning of this journey, I have included a theoretical stop in Nepal thinking ‘how could I return to this corner of the world for the first time since my departure and not go?’ And yet it has also remained the biggest unknown. I am unclear what I would find there and how it would feel to return. The health related social service program I worked with discontinued some years ago due to Maoist insurgent activity. Since my departure in ’98, I have had no contact with my Nepali friends aside from the exchange of a single letter. That letter, and its response, were carried by the hands of a friend who happened to be trekking en route to the Rowaling through Simigaun, a village 2 days walk from the nearest road to which I traveled to half a dozen times.  It will likely be a destination when I do make it back to the country.

Just before leaving Tournai, a wave of thought arose, ‘how would it look if Nepal fell off the itinerary?’ I had realized that Nepal is not currently where my heart is. It hasn’t been there since I left almost a decade ago. My heart has been recently quite occupied in the nurturing of a new relationship. Additionally, a portion of my heart is still quite passionately preoccupied with the idea of studying Chinese. And there is a sense inside me, ‘well you’re more rested now, let’s get on with it’.

I have watched myself over these past weeks, the normal stresses of travel on the body and mind, fluctuations in stamina and motive force. I have considered how much energy will be involved in the journey in India. On top of that to add an undetermined period in Nepal feels like looking at a manuscript in need of editing, one too many chapters. If and when I return to Nepal, I would rather it be an intentional, discrete journey, rather than tagged on to this odyssey of mine. And such a journey would be more vital and rich if I could share that extraordinary Himalayan kingdom with Ewan and even additional friends. This adjustment feels like a natural gesture manifesting the consideration of not only my own needs, but of ‘us’. In the simple act of mentally removing Nepal from my itinerary, a great spaciousness has opened up inside. In that opening I feel more energy freed up to carry into Taiwan to explore what is there or not there for me. The horizon will evidently remain dynamic, as it always is; shifting in appearance as we approach closer to a given destination.

En Route

            For the last time for I don’t know how long, this morning I watched a pale dawn emerge over northern Europe.  I left southern Belgium at 7am, boarded a train in Lille for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the sun cresting clouds at the horizon just prior to our arrival.  I am entering into a period of the twilight zone; my relationship to time and space will be enshrouded in the surreal.  I will spend close to 40 hours en route to Sydney, Australia (with stops in Bahrain & Bangkok, the latter of the two being a 17 hour layover).  Perhaps during these many hours I will be able to craft a post recounting the details of my final days in Belgium, my departure from the European continent, entry into the next chapter of the journey.  

Extended Global Family

The Refuge of Tournai

Today, November 30^th, I will board yet another train, this time bound for the Hague, Holland. In my travel experience, one mindset reigns during periods when I completely surrender to living out of a backpack, moving from place to place. There is a distinctly different experience when I have a base from which to travel, a refuge to which I can return; pragmatically a place for excess baggage while traveling with pared belongings, emotionally a place for the mind and spirit to rest and integrate experiences from the road. Even with the sanctuary of my base in Tournai, long term travel is wearisome. As I prepared a small backpack for the journey today, I encountered some internal reluctance, a yearning for stillness, my mind and heart still integrating experiences from my not so distant time in Israel and more recent journey to Paris. The reluctance is rather easily set aside, although I feel it important to honor along with the wide spectrum of internal experiences in the midst of my travels. Having moved out of my shared Seattle rental home the end of August, I have now been ‘homeless’ for 3 months and during this time laid my head in at least 15 different locations. Perhaps homefull is a more appropriate descriptor as I have not once been without welcome from warm, nurturing friends along my way.

One of the phenomena I have observed while traveling is my enduring daily pursuit of ritual and routine. I believe it is an innate human impulse. Maybe it indicates the search for a semblance of control in the midst of a fluctuating external environment. I reckon it is also my ego’s attempt, wherever I am for however long my tenure, to somehow claim territory as my own.

Since my return from Paris, such gestures have included morning stretching and meditation, a certain sensibility around the drinking of tea, shared meals with my hosts, daily swims at the extraordinary Olympic sized pool on the outskirts of Tournai (truly the most beautiful facility in which I have ever had the opportunity to swim laps), portions of my days at this keyboard writing to Ewan and for this travel log. I have folded myself, or more accurately been graciously folded, back into the home and lives of Caddy & Jean. The house is currently a whir of activity in preparation for a large Christmas market fundraiser for the Scleroderma Association. My days have been peppered with errands and work helping. Additionally, in the wake of a childcare collapse for my host brother and his companion, we have had their 4 month old son Gaspar at the house, the inimitable institution of the European family sweeping in to do what is needed.

Global Chosen Family

As I mentioned in one of my earliest European posts, my youth was distinguished by broad exposure to international exchange. In the autumn of 1986, Martijn Snoep arrived from Holland as a Rotary exchange student. He lived with us for 4 months and became an integral part of our global family. A dear brother and friend, we were very close in those initial years. He was particularly influential in my decision to travel as an exchange student. More than a decade ago, my family traveled to Holland for his wedding; a fabulous and intimate celebration of 34 people held in the outdoor courtyard of his parents-in-law home, something in between a palatial farmhouse and a small castle.

Martijn’s and my shared vocabulary decreased for a period later in my college years. Martijn was fervently pursuing a new and high powered career in anti-trust law. Concurrently, I was taking incremental albeit decisive steps away from western culture, amenities, priorities, and spiritual traditions with my first trip to Nepal in a language/culture immersion program in 1994, and my prompt return in 1997 after graduation from college. The platform on which Martijn and I were able to meet during this era seemed diminished. Aside from a fleeting visit in 2004, we have not shared significant time in many years. Despite limited contact, I believe we have continued to hold the other in warm regard with the bond of so much shared history. My parents have carried the communication baton maintaining contact over recent years, updating us on the lives of the other.

now Sunday December 2^nd

As I exited from the platforms toward the front of the Hague’s central station, I spotted Martijn’s face in the crowd. I was struck by how many times we have played that scene, this old friend/brother awaiting me at one of Holland’s stations, me folding a Netherlands visit into my crisscrossing of this continent. Our weekend was a very easy and relaxed time; Martijn, his wife Agniet, and their two children Tjimen (6), Isa (5). My last visit was extremely brief and the home environment was characterized by completely normal toddler pandemonium. This was my first real opportunity to meet the kids. I observed their individual articulation not only in speech, but as they interacted with each other, with their parents, in their bodies, in the world. Martijn and Agniet explained that they have been humbled by the childrens’ increasingly sophisticated ‘lawyerly’ type reasoning, routinely ‘winning’ by their superior argumentation with the parents. Both Tjimen & Isa appeared extremely articulate and engaged with a strikingly beautiful rapport between them as siblings. Tjimen seems a more interior spirit, fond of reading, a bit more reserved in his social interactions. Of Isa’s unique qualities, I was struck by the lithe, gymnastic command of her body mounting the banisters of their precipitous European stairwells, her long legs splayed at right angle to her tiny body, or on another occasion ascending a playground climbing wall. It was a joy to share time with them over a couple days.

After a night of unremitting rain and strong winds, Saturday dawned with clear blue skies, reasonably soft temperatures, and moderate winds. Our morning was spent grocery shopping; produce at the fruit and veg store, fish from the harbour. I was struck, as I have been on multiple occasions since my return to Europe, by the sense of leisure in market interactions. Nothing is hurried, nor have I witnessed impatience with the pacing. People enter the store, take their number and wait. My biased eyes detect or project a sense of care in these interactions, a very real humanity which seems less present in the American haste, typified by larger commercial grocery stores where one needn’t even communicate with a human, but rather proceed to the automated checkout and not make eye contact with a soul.

Martijn, the kids and I returned to the harbour Saturday afternoon for a fantastic, invigorating afternoon walking the beach, large wake crashing into the shore, the air deliciously clean. Windsurfers skidded through the North Sea waters, parasailers filled the skies with their colorful parachutes exploiting the wind to defy gravity in their flight over and amongst the waves. The temperature remained just inside of invigoration without chilling us to the bone, affording us several hours upon the smooth golden sand dotted with thousands of tiny shells, the wind ethereally dressed in clouds of sand skating along the beach.

In the afternoon, per the kids’ request, we had an acupuncture demonstration which the parents are certain will remain their enduring memory from my visit. Throughout the entire weekend, Martijn, Agniet and I shared a great deal of conversation about health care; disillusioning experiences we have all had with conventional medicine, the variety of alternatives including and outside of Chinese medicine, the nature of the insurance systems in the US and the Netherlands, the influence of pharmaceutical companies, and the possibilities I see in our lifetime for greater understanding between healing paradigms and more integrated care. The Hague has a very international population and Martijn was surprised and interested to learn that my training encompassed Chinese herbal medicine. Although he has no personal experience, he has seen Chinese apothecaries in the Hague.

Agniet is an artist with a stunningly whimsical imagination paired with extraordinary graphic design skills. In the recent past, she has developed a particular affinity for insects, explaining that when we see human faces we immediately make judgments based on our life experience and prejudice. It is a very different dynamic when encountering insects. We cannot attribute quite the same characteristics nor project the same biases. In her recent artistic endeavors she has undertaken photographing beetles and casting them as characters; ‘parents’ cooing over a newborn pupa, an assumedly female beetle posed at the entry of a camper wearing pink lace lingerie, two beetles ‘kissing’ before a full moon,. It was wonderful to be reminded of and have a glimpse into the fanciful contours of Agniet’s mind and creative spirit. If you have an interest in her work you can visit the site below.

http://web.mac.com/snoep/Snoep_Producties/Insecten.html

The remainder of our Saturday was leisurely time at the house including a visit from Martijn’s grandfather who I have not seen since their wedding in 1996. Widowed in recent years, he lives close by and remains a regular part of their lives. Martijn, a magnificent cook as long as I’ve known him, prepared sushi dinner for the family, and thereafter we shared conversation reasonably late into the evening.

Sunday held an intriguing multicultural experience; the children’s St Nicholas Day Judo competition. The weather having returned to drenching rain, we packed into a medium sized matted room with fogged windows, two matches held concurrently, all the kids, ages 5 to 7, neatly wrapped up in their white uniforms. Martijn explained there is a reasonably long history of Judo, amongst the martial arts, in Holland dating back to the 1930s, some Dutch having quite successfully competed at the Olympic level. In addition to the normal referees at this sparring, there was one of St Nicholas’ helpers, controversial black Pete, attending each match, providing sweets by the handful to every child. The relaxed spirit of the dojo seemed to be characterized by good will, with all children walking away at the end with a medal for whatever place they took accompanied by a gift from black Pete.

Sunday late afternoon, Martijn & I again parted ways at the station, him waiting, waving on the platform until the train had pulled away. I was struck by an ease and a true sense of meeting in our shared time this weekend which I have not experienced in our interactions in many years. In addition to our long shared history, I feel there is an absence of pretense at this stage in our lives. We are who we are. We share commonality in certain respects and engage in life very differently in others, and all of that is okay. It was a joy to be, yet again, welcomed into the home of this dear brother, to share briefly in the family life he has created for himself.