Along El camino, nine days of walking

Burgos, 31 oktober 2011.

High table lands and fellow travellers, leaving them behind or they overtaking me, forested trails with cobble stone paths that hurt my poor feet with each step, my crazy brain cells still going into overload while I put one painfull step in front of the other - without pain there is no satisfection, a truth that stands as strong as a concrete building - ...but no, the truth is that each step is getting me stronger, my head emptier...I even catch myself whistling every so often, my bare shoulders taking the straps of my heavy backpack with an ease that was not there only mere days ago, my torso cald in a Thai Buddy singlet hardly producing persperation compared to the sweat drenched same Thai singlet of only last week´s struggling...

Spending my evenings with beautifull Corean women who are obsessed with my daily drawings, my sketchbook going from manicured female fingers to more Asian femininity, high pitches giggles at my Desnuda drawings from Amsterdam, shy questions fore photo companionship, more shy Preguntitas for a portrait, the gray in my ten day old beard seems to impose tentative chin touches...my travelling stories awes them though I leave out my day time mental worries of these other crazy countries I visited - young ladies should enjoy themselves and don´t have to be horrorised by nutty life experiences from an old fuck like me...well, I aint that old but surely getting there...

Entering Burgos along a long industrialised paved road after all these days of solitute and Pas de Gran Cité Vie is getting on my nerves, the exhaust fumes of passing cars like poisonous toxic on my overloaded gray brain cells, but defiantly I walk on keen on a bed dormitory style in yet another Refugio...

!6 days of walking remain...probably devoid of internet access...so no way to throw my daily pensive moments on the Sacred net...SHOULD BUY A SMALL LABTOP NEXT TIME AROUND!!!

Along El Camino, seven days of walking

La Rioja, Belorado, 29 okt. 2011.

High table land, Mesitas and local farmers overtaking me with their tractors, hard at work bringing in the crops, frequent Buen Camino greetings from the indiginous population in small hilltop Pueplos I pass through, walking, walking and more walking, my head full with memories of the past while my painfull feet clad in my black army boots do their work bringing me closer to Santiago De Compostela with each step...

I wonder why I did the things I did, knowing fully well they were against the Buddhist principles I came to admire so much when I was living another life, long ago in another excistence...

The strange and weird world of war I was obsessed with...my visit to the blood diamonds obsession of Sierra Leone, where people did the most craziest things to one another for Nada in Realidad, getting myself drunk as a skunk in dark obscured bars full with Negros whose eyes were filled with contempt for my white skin...amazing I got out of there alive and in one piece...the wind of a not so new country in my life blowing in my face while I step forward defiantly, the straps of my heavy backpack biting into my shoulderblades...other memories appearing inside my crazy and fucked-up mind...

Kashmir was 24 hours of sitting inside a crowded local bus with army trucks overtaking us, black clad soldiers with heavy machine guns at every intersection, their hide outs covered with camouflage nets against grenates, flooding the bus and giving the passengers a hard time, hearing gun fire and explosions each night from the comfortable but badly mantained houseboats on Dal Lake while smoking strong loacl Charras...why the fuck did I go there anyway when there is so much more to see in the Indain sub-continent...

I AM LUCKY WITH THE WEATHER IN THIS PART OF SPAIN THAT IS RIGHTFULLY CALLED lA ESPANYA VERDE, with the sun beaming down on my rasored head I stumple on, hardly being able to deal with the trails and jubilations of my life, invading the privacy of my personality...but then that is why I cam to this part of the world, why I choose to do this hard trek, one of the oldest in the human history...

My gray brain cells return to my frequent trips to prostitution rife exotic places like Las Phillipinas and Thailand, the super cheap Bordellos of Central America and crazy bars of Colombia wher the local soldiers would knock on the dorrs of small back rooms in greasy bars asking me for ID before I cuold continue my extra-marital affairs with down and out putezas with a dubious reputation and rotten teeth from too much alcohol abuse - I was drunk  most of the time and could therefore hardly care about the bodily state of my bed partners - ...

It is the seventh day and my feet are getting stronger by the day, my head getting saner with each kilometer behind me while my eyes take it all in, good foot and plenty of red wine should get me all the way to Santiago, local Refugios with limited access to the Sacred Internet and often free of charge, should take care of my nocturnal dreams tht are a continuation of my day time pensive moments...

26 days of walking with one week down my proferbial Gringo ass and no idea where this trip will eventually bring me...     

Along EL Camino, four days of walking

Logronyo, 25 okt. 2011.

With my feet hurting like hell itself - intresting metaphor considering this is supposed to be a sacred hike - and the bands of my backpack burrying themselves deep into my shoulderbones,  I hike on throught the hills of northen Spain, enjoying the charming compnay of Marion from Stutgard, Marion who reminds me a lot of my greatest love in this life - well, one of my greatest loves in this life anyway - Andrea from Kassel, her blue blinking eyes and blond half long hair blowing in the wind while she tells me all about her life back home, her partner - Mierda - and her 27 year old son living in Argentina for studying purposes...

I try to pay her the most of my attention but at the same moment trying not to attach myself to her though she obviously enjoys my presence...so I tell her about my own life, my trips across the globe, my upcoming journey to that asian realm ten or twelve hours of flying from Amsterdam, how the local ladies run down my door in the New Star in Pattaya - I HAVE AFTER ALL NEVER BEEN ASHAMED OF MY LIFE STYLE - and show her the pics of my art work back in my house in Amsterdam - thanks again to the digital photography world where you don´t have to run around the world with a heavy and huge portfolio, a simple 69 euro digital camara will do with 800 pics on your memory stick...

Finally getting ahead of her just opun reaching Logronyo, I run into an old local geezer, drunk as the proverbial skunk and in the possession of a plastic bag full with cold beer and three yellowish teeth that he flashes at me broadly, inviting me for a couple of free drinkies...perfect opportunity to wait for my new found lady buddy before reaching Logronyo after a great day of walking El Camino...

Along El Camino, three days of walking

Los Arcos, 25 nov. 2011

Not the first time I walk El Camino De Santiago De Compostela, though this time it seems more intense with the Camino having beciome a hype, the Albeques nearly full with Peregrinos from all over but still not as busy as in El Verano De Espanya when the roads are full with 1000s of hikers, having to sleep in the main squares of the villages the Camino passes along the way...

Still, I spend most of my walking hours alone, avoiding the company of other hikers, having come here with a heavy militay boots and even a heavier backpack that contains much more as I really need, that cuts into my shoulders with a vengeance, just the way I like it, testing myself once more to my limits...

When everybody takes the easy route, I take the off the beaten track detour, hiking through Bosques and hilly vineyards where the local Campesinos greet me friendly and amaibly, where my feet hurt like mad because of stones littering the path...

My head empty and devoid of thoughts, not even the two o´clock afternoon Menu del Dia can hurry me despite my empty belly - no breakfast but testing myself to the limit, remember - and when I finally check into a Refugio I collapse upon my bunk bed for several hours before going out to buy my necessary Botella De vino Tinto Para Pasar La Noche...

FOUR DAYS OF WALKING NOW WITH ANOTHER 27 COMING....

Kadhafi, another one bites the dust

                                           Amsterdam,

I started with this big bossomed black woman sitting opposite me in the train, coming back from Amstel Station after my last walk around Amsterdam, preparing myself for the Santiago De Compostela trek, checking out the bus station for my bus tomorrow morning to Bilbao, northern Spain...but the heavy and angry looks she shot me made me decide to continue with this younger version of Kadhafi I found in the daily Telegraaf newspaper...

From the days he still supported international terrorism and considered himself the king of Africa, the rightfull ruler of the Arab world...

From the days when President Ronald Reagan called him The Mad Dog, a nick that stuck...

I guess he was blissfully unaware in the  then and there of his messy bloody death in the here and now, 21 october 2011, taken out of a rubbish strewn sewage tube and begging for his life...

Bragging and boasting, challenging the whole world and ending his life as a coward in the dust and dirt of his native city Sirte for the whole world to see!!!

Another Muslima in the Amsterdam streets

The OccupyWallstreet movement in Amsterdam

Amsterdam,

Sorry to say this but the OccupyWallstreet movement's demonstration in Amsterdam reminds me a bit of my visits to Osho's discourses in Puna, all lot of shit being said but very little real action, a lot of misguided martyrs talking like chicken do their cackle but very little real sense, sitting around in circles smoking pot and drinking beer...

Degenerates, homeless acoholics from the street and drug abushers in their habitual ragged street clothes, many of whom I recognise at first glance, drinking cheap luke warm beer and enjoying the show, probably happy in the knowledge that finally the city's finest can't giving them a ticket for sleeping in the street, drinking booze or causing public disturbances, mêlee to the max and only a single fat cop walking his beat...amazing....

Beursplein 5's walls are covered with demands, colorfull cartons and rain drenched papers, banners of all types, depicting the outrage of the impoverished masses, outrageous cries for freedom and economic rights for foreigners, the fall of the Euro and American green back, release Malcom X from the United States' torture cells one placate reads (????) , I can make no sense of most of it, just that no real solutions are being offered...

Better I leave this hippy enclave in the Amsterdam centre with that handfull of small tents and their fanatic owners alone and continue my long walks around good old Mokum

Miss Xia

                                                        Amsterdam,

Miss Xia, the lady who was posing at Peter's studio during our  wine drinking evening.

A wine drinking session with Peter Klashorst

                                                Amsterdam,

Peter's studio in the heart of the Amsterdam city centre, is a typical artist's chaotic mess, a bit like my own house back in the Westerpark neighborhood but much bigger...colorfull paintings dot the walls, African masks placed around at random, jars containing acrylic stained water and used paint brushes all over the place, paintings depicted international looking ladies covering the paint stained wooden floor, empty and not so empty bottles of red wine of different cellars, half full glasses containing more red wine, a green crate with beer bottles, possibly a southern Dutch Abdij brand...like I said, just like my own place but much bigger...

I am greeted by the Man himself, Peter Klashorst aka Het Konijn Dat Klashorst Heet - the Dutch Rabbit - by a vintictive Metro journalist called Luuk Koelman - and introduced to an appetising looking caucasian woman in a sexy outfit - don't I just love lingerie! - who is his latest posing "victim" - talking Luuk Koelman way here - glasses of wine and even more female company of the more darked skinned type...

Getting home, my head heavy with red wine, I feel unable to sleep despite all the alcohol running wild in my veins, despite the long day at the petting zoo and the bodily exhaustive work I did there all day, too many images of naked ladies, painted and real going all over the place in my Dutch mind...

I have to piant, drink cheap supermarket supplied cold beer from my Frigo and paint, paint, paint....finding myself awake on the floor the next morning stark naked and several paintings "sort of finished". 

Mister Friendly Looking Chap

                                                Amsterdam,

I did this portrait of  Mister Friendly Looking Chap a few days ago in a bar, taking a break from my long walks around the Amsterdam city, preparing myself for my Santiago De Compostella trek, having a coffee and apple pie...

Markers and aquarel on an edition of the free Metro newspaper, the green acrylic I added later in my house.

A Muslim lady in the crowd, taking her home

                                                    Amsterdam,

The Chador, The Niqaap, The Burka, all of them female garments that are supposed to protect the women wearing them as protection against the lustfull feelings of men passing them in the street, a couple of centimeters of threat making the difference between being devoured by male eyes or maybe feeling free and femenine...

Maybe the difference of a vitamine D deficiency - which is considered to be a possilbe
cause for rachitis, myopaticy, osteoporosis, osteomalicy and serious chalcium shortages in the human bones - and a healthy life...

My big walks in Amsterdam continue, my mind going Hoteldebotel, all over the place, the sketches in my moleskinerie multiplying by the sackfull...the moral and ethic issues of any megapole being churned over in my grain brain cells...

Four hours today, good practice for my upcoming Santiago De Compostella trek, before returning home and doing this Muslim lady...I guess I saw her in the crowd and took her home, mentally speaking anyway!!!

Joana and the Winston Bar in the Warmoesstraat

                                                  Amsterdam,

This is Joana from Spain but working in Amsterdam who I met last week in the Winston Bar in the Amsterdam Warmoestraat...a downtown bar that is rumoured to be the biggest pick-up joint in the whole of Holland, a bar where the clientêle can often be found on the stage - when there is no band playing - to check out the fresh "flesh" available for "consumption", a great vantage point as far as the visual world goes in this bar...I happen to have personal experience here...

Having this lively lady on the back of my ATB - all terrain bike you know - 03.00 o 'clock in the morning with her hands on a certain quest underneath my shirt and my head heavy on several pints of Heineken, was no easy job but I manage...

steamy and hot encounters followed suit...she made the contact and I made this sketch... 

Steve Jobs and a Greek lady in a bar

                                                 Amsterdam,

Dead tired after my long walk around the Amsterdam city, breaking in my new army boots for my upcoming walking trip in Northern Spain El Camino De Santiago De Compostella, four weeks of trekking through La Espanya Verde on the way to that religious catholic bastion where supposedly the holy James, one of Jesus christ's  - yes, I mean that misguided zealot that came out of the Galilea Area in that so-called Holy Land Palestina 2000 odd years ago - apostels is burried...

Busy making this sketch from a Telegraaf newspaper photo of Steve Jobs, that icon from the American selicone industry who died a few days ago, enjoying a cup of steaming Java at a rediculous price of 3.40 Euros...well, money no matter no more with the upcoming demise of the economic European powerhouse's money I guess...

The green colored eyes of the lady at the next table glued on my fingers that travel across the pages of my sketchbook at light speed, the ashtray being used as an improptu water container for my aquarel colors - I don't smoke anymore after all...

I invite her over, offer her another 3.40 Euro coffee - at least the waiter brings her a sugar cookie into the bargain, why did't I get that titbit free of charge tooth decayer? - and offer to draw her portrait as well, learning a few more words of Greek like:

                                Kalimera = good morning
                                Kalispera = good afternoon
                                Kalinigta = good night
                                        ogi = no

I wonder why she taught me that last word, was there a hidden message involved...whatever, thanks for the little posing session miss Electra from Greece

                      

People in Spaardammerstr.

                                                    Amsterdam,

Another autumn here in my beloved Amsterdam...and as every autumn I find myself back in front of the crappy old house I live in, enjoying my spare time and the sights of the street...

A woman in Burka quickly looking over her shoulder, giving me curiousl looks when she shuffles past me dragging her two kids along - I wonder secertly whether or not her God Allah will be amused or bemused because I draw one of his devotees -

A sad looking character with a huge bonnet on his head that reads Amsterdam.

Or maybe that red eyed elderly man with the orange colorerd scarf around his neck...all of them good models for my sketchbook. 

Railway station people

                                          Amsterdam,

People rushing to and fro, working stiffs in expensive suits and leather shoes that shine as a mirror, hurrying to catch their train in time, on the way to their office and a dominant boss...

A couple of alcoholics, raggedly dressed in unwashed clothes that probably originate from the rubbish of any big city, finding shelter from the slight rain outside the railway station, nervously looking around for rail company coppers while taking quick swigs from their alu cans of cheap supermarket beer, flea ridden and moth eaten dogs dozing at their feet, that help to make the begging come in easier, good protection at night too while their owners sleep on public park benches, the sleep of the booze induced comatose state known to drunks the world over...

A bunch of old gays eyeing me curiously while walking by, their overly feminine behaviour reminding me of the Katoys in Thailand...

An old bag lady sitting forlornly in a corner, her greasy belongings in plastic Appie Heyn shopping bags laying around her at random...

My fingers holding my black pen and colored markers, run across the pages of my sketchbook, visual expressions of the human species all around me, turning them into quick drawings...

Another s*cker from the Lonely Hearts Brigade

Amsterdam,

nearly two weeks now since Andere Hans, my neighbor at The Anne Frank House, has left for Thailand, probably hoping for juicy sex and good tasty food, all at bargain prices of course...

Mister Fat Slob has hassled me for years for thailand related info before finally making his big break, buying that KLM ticket and sky diving for Bangkok, onward to Kho Samui, one month of perfect clarity, discovering King Bhumipol's Asian realm from the eyes of a first timer, an easy victim for the members of the Isan womanhood, another sex starved European male with too much dough in his pockets, his need for female company obscuring his normal common sence...if he ever had that at all?

Not realising someone is playing with his d*ck but it ain't he himself, laboriously trying to give him a h*rd-on and stealing his fat wallet at the same time...words of lust and love mixing with soft groaning while he doing his male thing on her, all of it directed at making him part with his hard earned Euros...

Selling his Amsterdam prints in front of that notoriously long queue of foreign Anne Frank House visitors, waiting to get in and being hassled by the expert on Amsterdam humor while feeling bored in the line...

Money to pay for the daughter who doesn't wanna see him no more...

Like I said, another s*cker from the Lonely Hearts Brigate!!!

TIME

Amsterdam,

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO CHANGE TIME

A quote from the Amsterdam street artist LASER 3.14