Devastation and new Life

In this Corona times I sometimes feel devastated. 

A positive outlook is blurred by lack of perspective. 

Left alone by the lack of touch and connection I don't know where this all goes and at the same time have to follow sometimes irrational rules and regulations.

Today I did review old images on my PC and came across a series which I took over the years in Baviaanskloof, Hout Bay.

In the summer 2014-2015 Baviaanskloof experienced a very devastating veld fire. 

 The heat had cracked rocks and melted glass.

The devastation was blowing my mind.

But only a few weeks later the life force was breaking through the darkness.

Nature does not give up.

A disaster is cleansing and makes space for new life.

A few months later Baviaanskloof was back to new life.

It is not the same old, rather it has been rejuvenated with new life.

I can trust in the creative force of life.

 I am not lost.

 I know that there will be new life again.

Mother Mountain, Mother Earth, Mother City

I like to walk through the Deer Park area below Table Mountain. Just below Tafelberg Rd is a big flat granite rock. This is called Platteklip and the Platteklip stream flows over it all year round. 

 Even in the hot Cape Town summer there is a constant flow of water polishing the rock.

I sit down next to the stream and watch the water rushing down to the city.

For me this is a magic place, if I listen long enough, I can hear the giggles and laughter of Khoi San children playing. I see them letting little pieces of grass race over the rock. This must have been their paradise for thousands of years. Water all year around and a valley sheltered from the wind.

The big Mother mountain in the backdrop with its porous sandstone acts like a sponge keeping all the rainwater. This life-giving fluid is seeping down until it gets to the underlying layer of granite.

Here it forms streams and springs at the foot of the mountain.

The round, flat, solid rock is like the round belly of mother earth. Water is running down through her valley. Nourishing all of nature below.

In the old days, the stream was jumping over rocks, flowing through a grassy plain, maybe forming a vlei before seeping through the sand into the sea at what is today Strand Street.

All of this was like paradise for the ancient people and it was this paradise that attracted the sailors and merchants to replenish the provisions for their ships on the way to India.

The Mother City was born.

Merchants and colonizers took possession of this gift from Mother Mountain and Mother Earth.

At first it was used to wash their linen at the wash houses and water the company garden. Later Cape Town had canals between the houses like Amsterdam. 

As the city grew the canals became more and more dirty from the effluent and floating rubbish.

Eventually they were covered, and the city grew over its life-giving waters.

This is a history of a few hundred years of possession. The feminine life-giving force gets contaminated and is covered up. Its true nature forgotten. Paradise is lost.

I sit and listen to the stream and honor the mothers and their gifts.

The mothers are still here. It is time to uncover them again.

Looking into a Frog’s Eye

Frogs always fascinated me. 

When I photograph them, it is good to know that the frog’s vision is triggered by movement.

In the moment we look into each other’s eyes there is a connection in stillness. 

The slightest movement would make it jump and the connection is lost.

I am standing still, breathing slow, for the frog to trust me. This trust opens a window inside. 

I can see into this reptile being and at the same time I can see into the reptile deep inside myself. 

I can feel my ancient programs of survival.

Yes, I too can be triggered to jump. 

Looking into the frog’s eye connects me with old anxieties, coded in my DNA. 

Hello stranger, you are welcome.

Caged

In this time of the Corona virus I feel caged in. 

During my meditation of today I remembered this photo I took a while ago at Phakalane in Hout Bay.

A dried cage of a flower is protecting and holding a seed.

When my children were young, we learned from an anthroposophical doctor the value of illness for the development of children. 

Every time they went through the usual childhood infections one could see a significant jump in their development after they had recovered.

The virus forces me into a cage of self-isolation. 

This cage is holding me in suspense. 

Like the seed in this image I am longing to fall to grow and live. 

I am longing to feel the wet earth and crack open to new life.

But the cage keeps me in a resting place until the time is right.

There will be winter storms and the turmoil of hard rain to break the cage around the seed and then in spring, when the soil is ready, the seed will grow to a new flower.

And after the virus has gone, our communities will be different and grown to new life again.

Charnel Ground of the Sea

I took this image of the sand at Diaz beach, Cape Point.

What looks like ordinary sand from a distance turns out to be a billion pieces of broken shells.

Each one of them once contained a living creature. 

Shells were protecting and holding the form of uncounted bodies.

Bodies eaten by birds, fish and digested by bacteria, fertilising the ocean of life. 

The shells are broken up into tiny pieces and polished by the sea.

Millions of remnants of past life are now morphing into a beautiful beach and in thousands of years will become limestone in a new world.

All these tiny little pieces of sand show me how small our life is in the bigger picture. Our mind tends to constantly blow our ego up out of all proportion.

However, beyond the mind we are all of this: The sea, the beach, every bubble in the foam and every tiny little piece of sand are an expression of creation and so are we.

Edge of Africa

This is the western edge of Africa.

It is a rough edge, dark and mysterious.

There is a bit of Africa in all of mankind. After all, our ancestors came from this continent.

I find this in myself and maybe that’s why I have been drawn to Africa 

and ended up here making it my home.

This edge must have been terrifying for the early explorers 

and going past they found Good Hope.

To get to Good Hope we must travel past our darkness and past our edges.

It also means to see, recognise and acknowledge them inside and out.

The sailors feared the edges, but they had to look at them clearly.

If the edge stayed in the fog it became most dangerous.

Dance of Creation

This is an image of the sea at Diaz Beach, Cape Point.

I was watching the flow of the water welling up from the deep, dark calm.

Foamy structures welling up in constant changing shapes of a million shades of white and blue.

As I observe I can feel the bliss of movements taking form and after a short while dissolving again.

It is a fleeting reality emerging and flowing back into the deep dark unknown.

I can feel the pure joy of effortless emergence.

Joy is its only purpose.

There is no plan, target or aim. There is nothing to accomplish.

It is just the wonderful bliss of creation.

The ocean is part of and a metaphor for all there is.

It is a metaphor for the bliss of consciousness observing all into being 

and fading back into the full stillness of total potential.

This is the eternal dance of creation. God breathing in and breathing out.