The Mirror

I use a mirror to see myself - a camera to take pictures of all my life experiences and of other people's experiences.  A notebook to write down all the events of my life - and finally through the arts to express my longing for love and fulfillment.

This aging process is challenging, pressing, losing the will to plan ahead, sometimes empty, friends leave us and depart, and we are left with the present moment of our lives...memories that seem to stay on forever, wrongdoings, precious moments, a string of memories that keep us awake at night.

I've come to the Sunshine Coast to take control, to mark time, to be present. When I am near the ocean, I feel that. Nothing is important, just to breathe the sea air, feel that volatile wind,  touch the sand with the souls of your feet, and the merging with the water - feeling our ancestral fish-fins take us deeper into an embryonic fluid that feels like home.


Ipswich for me was a town that reminded me of my days in Amsterdam as a teenager; the excitement of the Art Galleries, the pleasantries of my Montessori Education and sense of belonging, the meeting with interesting people who had some journey to share and explore and stimulated one's senses and intellect. Shopkeepers who took the time to chat with you and show their care. Festivals and coloured webs of artist's creations hanging in the air. Multicultural flags of different language groups expressed in song and dance. And yet the ocean called me, beckoned me, to be still- to listen - to dance within.

One moment along the shores of Golden Beach, and I see my mother...Mammie...and I walking along discussing the heavenly spheres and trying to grasp the divine blessings of the Universe and all that lives upon this earth. I see her lying on her camp bed, catching the sun that was only ever briefly glimpsed at during the Summers of the 1950's in Holland. She loved the Australian sun, missed the European architecture, played her Chopin Serenades to remind her of home, and reminded us children of the importance of education but also free choice. I am grateful for the time I spent with her upon this earth, she left too soon, as did my Pappie, and left each of us to find our way into this foreign culture of Australia that had invited us to bring progress and prosperity and yet left us bereft of our family-clan.

Now that I am here, close to where my parents died, I feel I can come home. To face that stillness within me, to hold close my divine companion, and trace the arc from birth to pending death, in a state where peace resides and artistry becomes one's self and meditation gives us the time to feel alive in everything we do.