To the sea

Seascape no 2, Detail, mixed media on board

... only a few more hours and then I'm on my way to the sea... and the weather forecast is fabulous.

So, besides a lot of other things, I am optimistic to have at least a few photos and drawings when I come back on Tuesday.

It's my friend Ate's final project. A short film about Kalifornien/California and the normality of North German camping sites.

More on that later. But I just remembered one thing that Ate gave me when I was leaving for Glasgow. It was a large ink drawing with a very sparse blue added to it - a portrait, and one of Khalid Gibran's little stories.

The Madman
Khalil Gibran

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long
before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all
my masks were stolen,--the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in
seven lives,--I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,

"Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear
of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top
cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed
my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun
kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for
the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I
cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from
being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in
us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a thief in a jail
is safe from another thief.

I just looked it up again and had to smile. Strange how some themes of your life remain rather constant. So it did for her and so it did for me. And I smile some more because she was there that summer in 1996 and she is here this summer too. I guess I'm back.

Have a good weekend, a bit of seabreeze, sand and sunshine.