Gandhi and Truth

Today is Mahat­ma Gandhi’s birth­day and con­se­quent­ly the day of non­vi­o­lence. I would like to quote from the intro­duc­tion to Gandhi’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. In between the text are pic­tures that Fred­dy took when he was climb­ing Mt Kenya in March. … I have giv­en the chap­ters I pro­pose to write the title of The Sto­ry of My …

Shoes

This week I final­ly earned my first Pounds ster­ling. For the time being, that mere fact is more impor­tant to me than the quan­ti­ty of pounds, which is a good thing. I have nego­ti­at­ed com­pet­i­tive­ly about this job, which is why my income is now below the min­i­mum wage. The job is in a shoe …

Chaos

This week­end we moved home, from Amers­foort (NL) to Gilling­ham (UK). Mov­ing house always brings out the truth that the cos­mos tends to fall into chaos. Pack­ing results in a mess of box­es and things, not just in the house but also in my head. Dur­ing the last week, I almost missed the train three …

In the midst of the innumerable stars

At the risk of bor­ing the read­er, I’m writ­ing again about Ivan the cat. There are things that Ivan and I share. Many of our bio­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics are the same. Accord­ing to the Dalai Lama, we both seek peace, com­fort and secu­ri­ty. Togeth­er, we devel­oped our habits and pat­terns, and there is def­i­nite­ly some communication …

The cow and the planet

After a rea­son­ably warm day I’m in the train, enjoy­ing the farm­land between Ede and Amers­foort. The orange evening sun slow­ly sinks towards the hori­zon. In the sky I see a lot of air bal­loons float­ing by. It must be nice to lit­er­al­ly tran­scent the every­day hus­tle and see your every­day envi­ron­ment from a different …